The quantity of chocolate creams the child eats cannot be good for her digestion.  I must see to this.

July 2d.

A telegram from Judith to say she postpones her return to Monday.  I have been longing to see the dear woman again, and I am greatly disappointed.  At the same time it is a respite from an explanation that grows more difficult every day.  I hate myself for the sense of relief.

This morning came an evening dress for Carlotta which has taken a month in the making.  This, I am given to understand, is delirious speed for a London dress-maker.  To celebrate the occasion I engaged a box at the Empire for this evening and invited her to dine with me.  I sent a note of invitation round to Mrs. McMurray.

Carlotta did not come down at half-past seven.  We waited.  At last Mrs. McMurray went up to the room and presently returned shepherding a shy, blushing, awkward, piteous young person who had evidently been crying.  My friend signed to me to take no notice.  I attributed the child’s lack of gaiety to the ordeal of sitting for the first time in her life at a civilised dinner-table.  She scarcely spoke and scarcely ate.  I complimented her on her appearance and she looked beseechingly at me, as if I were scolding her.  After dinner Mrs. McMurray told me the reason of her distress.  She had found Carlotta in tears.  Never could she face me in that low cut evening bodice.  It outraged her modesty.  It could not be the practice of European women to bare themselves so immodestly before men.  It was only the evidence of her visitor’s own plump neck and shoulders that convinced her, and she suffered herself to be led downstairs in an agony of self-consciousness.

When we entered the box at the Empire, a troupe of female acrobats were doing their turn.  Carlotta uttered a gasp of dismay, blushed burning red, and shrank back to the door.  There is no pretence about Carlotta.  She was shocked to the roots of her being.

“They are naked!” she said, quiveringly.

“For heaven’s sake, explain,” said I to Mrs. McMurray, and I beat a hasty retreat to the promenade.

When I returned, Carlotta had been soothed down.  She was watching some performing dogs with intense wonderment and delight.  For the rest of the evening she sat spell-bound.  The exiguity of costume in the ballet caused her indeed to glance in a frightened sort of way at Mrs. McMurray, who reassured her with a friendly smile, but the music and the maze of motion and the dazzle of colour soon held her senses captive, and when the curtain came down she sighed like one awaking from a dream.

As we drove home, she asked me: 

“Is it like that all day long?  Oh, please to let me live there!”

A nice English girl of eighteen would not flaunt unconcerned about my drawing-room in a shameless dressing-gown, and crinkle up her toes in front of me; still less would she tell me outrageous stories; but she will wear low-necked dresses and gaze at ladies in tights without the ghost of an immodest thought.  I was right when I told Carlotta England was Alexandretta upside-down.  What is immoral here is moral there, and vice-versa.  There is no such thing as absolute morality.  I am very glad this has happened.  It shows me that Carlotta is not devoid of the better kind of feminine instincts.