so good-humoured, so spontaneous.  If she has a pain in her stomach, she says so with the most engaging frankness.  Sometimes I think of her only, in Pasquale’s words, as a bundle of fascination, and forget that she has no soul.  Nearly always, however, something happens to remind me.  She loves me to tell her stories.  The other night I solemnly related the history of Cinderella.  She was enchanted.  It gave me the idea of setting her to read “Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.”  I was turning this over in my mind while she chewed the cud of her enjoyment, when she suddenly asked whether I would like to hear a Turkish story.  She knew lots of nice, funny stories.  I bade her proceed.  She curled herself up in her favourite attitude on the sofa and began.

I did not allow her to finish that tale.  Had I done so, I should have been a monster of depravity.  Compared with it the worst of Scheherazade’s, in Burton’s translation, were milk and water for a nunnery.  She seemed nonplussed when I told her to stop.

“Are oriental ladies in the habit of telling such stories?” I asked.

“Why, yes,” she replied with a candid air of astonishment.  “It is a funny story.”

“There is nothing funny whatever in it,” said I.  “A girl like you oughtn’t to know of the existence of such things.”

“Why not?” asked Carlotta.

I am always being caught up by her questions.  I tried to explain; but it was difficult.  If I had told her that a maiden’s mind ought to be as pure as the dewy rose she would not have understood me.  Probably she would have thought me a fool.  And indeed I am inclined to question whether it is an advantage to a maiden’s after career to be dewy-roselike in her unsophistication.  In order to play tunes indifferently well on the piano she undergoes the weary training of many years; but she is called upon to display the somewhat more important accomplishment of bringing children into the world without an hour’s educational preparation.  The difficulty is, where to draw the line between this dewy, but often disastrous, ignorance and Carlotta’s knowledge.  I find it a most delicate and embarrassing problem.  In fact, the problems connected with this young woman seem endless.  Yet they do not disturb me as much as I had anticipated.  I really believe I should miss my pretty Persian cat.  A man must be devoid of all aesthetic sense to deny that she is delightful to look at.

And she has a thousand innocent coquetries and cajoling ways.  She has a manner of holding chocolate creams to her white teeth and talking to you at the same time which is peculiarly fascinating.  And she must have some sense.  To-night she asked me what I was writing.  I replied, “A History of the Morals of the Renaissance.”  “What are morals and what is the Renaissance?” asked Carlotta.  When you come to think of it, it is a profound question, which philosophers and historians have wasted vain lives in trying to answer.  I perceive that I too must try to answer it with a certain amount of definition.  I have spent the evening remodelling my Introduction, so as to define the two terms axiomatically with my subsequent argument, and I find it greatly improved.  Now this is due to Carlotta.