a home for part of the year at least.  It was certainly annoying that fate should have cut in so unexpectedly.  And for what?  Apparently for nothing but that a girl with grey, enigmatic eyes and close-shut lips should keep from Mary a position which she did not want herself.  For Mary, captive of her Thought, was more than ready to believe that Desire’s hidden preference was for John.  She naturally could not grant her rival a share of her own discriminating taste in loving.

“I suppose,” thought Mary, “it is her immaturity which makes her prefer the doctor person to one who so far outranks him.  She admires sleek hair and a straight nose.  The finer fascinations of Benis escape her.”

Meanwhile she stayed on.

“I know I should come home,” she wrote the most select of the select friends.  “And I know dear Miss Campion thinks so!  But the situation here is too absorbing.  And, as my invitation was indefinite, I can hardly be accused of outstaying it.  I can’t be supposed to know that I’m not wanted.  I justify myself by the knowledge that I am of some use to Benis.  You know I can interest most men when I try, and this time my ’heart is in it’—­like Sentimental Tommy.  I am even teaching a perfectly dear parrot they have here to sing, ’Oh, What a Pal was Mary.’  Will you run over to my rooms and send down that London smoke chiffon frock with the silver underslip?  Stockings and slippers to match in a box in the bottom drawer.  I am contemplating a moon-light mood and must have the accessories.  One loses half the effect if one does not dress the part.  Madam Enigma never dresses in character.  Because she never assumes one.  So dull to be always just oneself, don’t you think?  Even if one knew what one’s real self is, which I am sure I do not.

“This girl annoys me.  How she can be so simple and yet so complex I can’t understand.  I thought perhaps a dash of jealousy might be revealing.  But she hasn’t turned a hair.  I have my emotions pretty well in hand myself but even if I didn’t adore my husband, I’d see that no one else appropriated him.  But as far as Madam Coolness is concerned it looks as if I might put her husband in my pocket and keep him there indefinitely.

“I told you in my last about the good-looking doctor.  What she sees in him puzzles me.  He is handsome but as dull as all the proverbs.  Can’t be original even in his love affairs—­otherwise he would hardly select his best friend’s bride—­so bookish!  Why doesn’t someone fall in love with the wife of his enemy?  It seems to have gone out since Romeo’s time. (Now don’t write and tell me that Juliet wasn’t married.)