She received me in her big, expansive way.

“Lord!  How good it is to see you.  I was getting the—­I was going to say ’the blind hump’—­but you don’t like it.  I was going to turn crazy and bite the furniture.”

“Why?” I asked with masculine directness.

“I’ve been trying to educate myself—­to read poetry.  Look here”—­she caught a small brown-covered octavo volume from the table.  “I can’t make head or tail of it.  It proved to me that it was no use.  If I couldn’t understand poetry, I couldn’t understand anything.  It was no good trying to educate myself.  I gave it up.  And then I got what you don’t like me to call the hump.”

“You dear Lola!” I cried, laughing.  “I don’t believe any one has ever made head or tail out of ‘Sordello.’  There once was a man who said there were only two intelligible lines in the poem—­the first and the last—­and that both were lies.  ’Who will, may hear Sordello’s story told,’ and ‘Who would, has heard Sordello’s story told.’  Don’t worry about not understanding it.”

“Don’t you?”

“Not a bit,” said I.

“That’s a comfort,” she said, with a generous sigh of relief.  “How well you’re looking!” she cried suddenly.  “You’re a different man.  What have you been doing to yourself?”

“I’ve grown quite alive.”

“Good!  Delightful!  So am I. Quite alive now, thank you.”

She looked it, in spite of the black outdoor costume.  But there was a dash of white at her throat and some white lilies of the valley in her bosom, and a white feather in her great black hat poised with a Gainsborough swagger on the mass of her bronze hair.

“It’s the spring,” she added.

“Yes,” said I, “it’s the spring.”

She approached me and brushed a few specks of dust from my shoulder.

“You want a new suit of clothes, Simon.”

“Dear me!” said I, glancing hastily over the blue serge suit in which I had lounged at Mustapha Superieur.  “I suppose I do.”

It occurred to me that my wardrobe generally needed replenishing.  I had been unaccustomed to think of these things, the excellent Rogers and his predecessors having done most of the thinking for me.

“I’ll go to Poole’s at once,” said I.

And then it struck me, to my whimsical dismay, that in the present precarious state of my finances, especially in view of my decision to abandon political journalism in favour of I knew not what occupation, I could not afford to order clothes largely from a fashionable tailor.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” said Lola apologetically, “but you’re always so spick and span.”

“And now I’m getting shabby!”

I threw back my head and laughed at the new and comical conception of Simon de Gex down at heel.

“Oh, not shabby!” echoed Lola.

“Yes, my dear.  The days of purple and fine linen are vorbei.  You’ll have to put up with me in a threadbare coat and frayed cuffs and ragged hems to my trousers.”