“And shoes to hide her shameless tus,” I said.

“They are the most beautiful toes I have ever seen!” cried Antoinette in imbecile admiration.  She has bewitched that old woman already.

I put on my hat and went to Wellington Road to consult Mrs. McMurray.  Heaven be thanked, thought I, for letting me take her little boy the day before yesterday to see the other animals, and thus winning a mother’s heart.  She will help me out of my dilemma.  Unfortunately she was not alone.  Her husband, who is on the staff of a morning newspaper, was breakfasting when I arrived.  He is a great ruddy bearded giant with a rumbling thunder of a laugh like the bass notes of an organ.  His assertion of the masculine principle in brawn and beard and bass somewhat overpowers a non-muscular, clean-shaven, and tenor person like myself.  Mrs. McMurray, on the contrary, is a small, bright bird of a woman.

I told my amazing story from beginning to end, interrupted by many Hoo-oo-oo-oo’s from McMurray.

“You may laugh,” said I, “but to have a mythical being out of Olympiodorus quartered on you for life is no jesting matter.”

Olymp—?” began McMurray.

“Yes,” I snapped.

“Bring her this afternoon, Sir Marcus, when this unsympathetic wretch has gone to his club,” said his wife, “and I’ll take her out shopping.”

“But, dear lady,” I cried in despair, “she has but one garment —­and that a silk dressing-gown of horrible depravity that belonged to a dancer of the second Empire!  She is also barefoot.”

“Then I’ll come round myself and see what can be done.”

“And by Jove, so will I!” cried McMurray.

“You’ll do such thing,” said his wife

“If I gave you a cheque for 100,” said I, “do you think you could get her what she wants, to go on with?”

“A hundred pounds!” The little lady uttered a delighted gasp and I thought she would have kissed me.  McMurray brought his sledgehammer of a hand down on my shoulder.

“Man!” he roared.  “Do you know what you are doing—­casting a respectable wife and mother of a family loose among London drapery shops with a hundred pounds in her pocket?  Do you think she will henceforward give a thought to her home or husband?  Do you want to ruin my domestic peace, drive me to drink, and wreck my household?”

“If you do that again,” said I, rubbing my shoulder, “I’ll give her two hundred.”

When I returned Carlotta was sitting, Turkish fashion, on a sofa, smoking a cigarette (to which she had helped herself out of my box) and turning over the pages of a book.  This sign of literary taste surprised me.  But I soon found it was the second volume of my edition de luxe of Louandre’s Les Arts Somptuaires, to whose place on the shelves sheer feminine instinct must have guided her.  I announced Mrs. McMurray’s proposed visit.  She jumped to her feet, ravished at the prospect, and sent my beautiful book (it is bound in tree-calf and contains a couple of hundred exquisitely coloured plates) flying onto the floor.  I picked it up tenderly, and laid it on my writing-table.