“Witness—­” began the Journalist, but the Critic cut him short.

“As you love me—­not that famous list of yours including so many of the actresses we all know.  I can’t bear THAT to-night.  After all the French have a better phrase for it—­’La Crise de quarante ans.’”

The Nurse and Divorcee had been very quiet, but here they locked hands, and the former remarked that they prepared to withdraw: 

“That is our cue to disappear—­and you, too, Youngster.  These men are far too wise.”

So we of the discussed sex made a circle with our clasped hand about the Youngster and danced him into the house.  The last I saw of the garden that night, as I looked out of my window toward the northeast, with “Namur” beating in my head, the five men had their heads still together, but whether “the other sex” was getting scientifically torn to bits, or they, too, had Namur in their minds I never knew.

IV

THE DOCTOR’S STORY

AS ONE DREAMS

THE TALE OF AN ADOLESCENT

The next day was very peaceful.  We were becoming habituated to the situation.  It was a Sunday, and the weather was warm.  There had been no real news so far as we knew, except that Japan had lined up with the Allies.  The Youngster had come near to striking fire by wondering how the United States, with her dislike for Japan, would view the entering into line of the yellow man, but the spark flickered out, and I imagine we settled down for the story with more eagerness than on the previous evening, especially when the Doctor thrust his hands into his pockets and lifted his chin into the air, as if he were in the tribune.  More than one of us smiled at his resemblance to Pierre Janet entering the tribune at the College de France, and the Youngster said, under his breath, “A Clinique, I suppose.”

The Doctor’s ears were sharp.  “Not a bit,” he answered, running his keen brown eyes over us to be sure we were listening before he began: 

* * * * *

In the days when it was thought that the South End was to be the smart part of Boston, and when streets were laid out along wide tree shaded malls, with a square in the centre, in imitation of some quarters of London,—­for Boston was in those days much more English in appearance than it is now,—­there was in one of those squares a famous private school.  In those days it was rather smart to go to a private school.  It was in the days before Boston had much of an immigrant quarter, when some smart families still lived in the old Colonial houses at the North End, and ministers and lawyers and all professional men sent their sons and their daughters to the public schools, at that time probably the best in the world.

At this private school, there was, at the time of which I speak, what one might almost call a “principal girl.”