come and spend a month; there is an excellent hotel where you would be very comfortable.  We have decided nothing as yet.  The Duchesse de ——­ is giving a costume ball; they say it is going to be a most wonderful affair.  I don’t know what money is not going to be spent upon the cotillion.  I have just got home a fascinating toilette.  I am going as a Pierrotte; you know, a short skirt and a little cap.  The Marquise gave a ball some few days ago.  I danced the cotillion with L——­, who, as you know, dances divinely; il m’a fait la cour, but it is of course no use, you know that.

“The other night we went to see the Maitre-Forges, a fascinating play, and I am reading the book; I don’t know which I like the best.  I think the play, but the book is very good too.  Now that is what I call a novel; and I am a judge, for I have read all novels.  But I must not talk literature, or you will say something stupid.  I wish you would not make foolish remarks about men that tout-Paris considers the cleverest.  It does not matter so much with me, I know you, but then people laugh at you behind your back, and that is not nice for me.  The marquise was here the other day, and she said she almost wished you would not come on her ‘days,’ so extraordinary were the remarks you made.  And by the way, the marquise has written a book.  I have not seen it, but I hear that it is really too decollete.  She is une femme d’esprit, but the way she affiche’s herself is too much for any one.  She never goes anywhere now without le petit D——.  It is a great pity.

“And now, my dear friend, write me a nice letter, and tell me when you are coming back to Paris.  I am sure you cannot amuse yourself in that hateful London; the nicest thing about you was that you were really tres Parisien.  Come back and take a nice apartment on the Champs Elysees.  You might come back for the Duchesse’s ball.  I will get an invitation for you, and will keep the cotillion for you.  The idea of running away as you did, and never telling any one where you were going to.  I always said you were a little cracked.  And letting all your things be sold!  If you had only told me!  I should like so much to have had that Turkish lamp.  Yours—­”

How like her that letter is;—­egotistical, vain, foolish; no, not foolish—­narrow, limited, but not foolish; worldly, oh, how worldly! and yet not repulsively so, for there always was in her a certain intensity of feeling that saved her from the commonplace, and gave her an inexpressible charm.  Yes, she is a woman who can feel, and she has lived her life and felt it very acutely, very sincerely—­sincerely?... like a moth caught in a gauze curtain!  Well, would that preclude sincerity?  Sincerity seems to convey an idea of depth, and she was not very deep, that is quite certain.  I never could understand her;—­a little brain that span rapidly and hummed a pretty humming tune.  But no, there was something more