CHAPTER VIII

July 4th.

Judith has come back.  I have seen her and I have explained
Carlotta.

All day long I felt like a respectable person about to be brought before a magistrate for being drunk and disorderly.  Now I have the uneasy satisfaction of having been let off with a caution.  I am innocent, but I mustn’t do it again.

As soon as I entered the room Judith embraced me, and said a number of foolish things.  I responded to the best of my ability.  It is not usual for our quiet lake of affection to be visited by such tornadoes.

“Oh, I am glad, I am glad to be back with you again.  I have longed for you.  I couldn’t write it.  I did not know I could long for any one so much.”

“I have missed you immensely, my dear Judith,” said I.

She looked at me queerly for a moment; then with a radiant smile: 

“I love you for not going into transports like a Frenchman.  Oh, I am tired of Frenchmen.  You are my good English Marcus, and worth all masculine Paris put together.”

“I thank you, my dear, for the compliment,” said I, “but surely you must exaggerate.”

“To me you are worth the masculine universe,” said Judith, and she seated me by her side on the sofa, held my hands, and said more foolish things.

When the tempest had abated, I laughed.

“It is you that have acquired the art of transports in Paris,” said I.

“Perhaps I have.  Shall I teach you?”

“You will have to learn moderation, my dear Judith,” I remarked.  “You have been living too rapidly of late and are looking tired.”

“It is only the journey,” she replied.

I am sure it is the unaccustomed dissipation.  Judith is not a strong woman, and late hours and eternal gadding about do not suit her constitution.  She has lost weight and there are faint circles under her eyes.  There are lines, too, on her face which only show in hours of physical strain.  I was proceeding to expound this to her at some length, for I consider it well for women to have some one to counsel them frankly in such matters, when she interrupted me with a gesture of impatience.

“There, there!  Tell me what you have been doing with yourself.  Your letters gave me very little information.”

“I am afraid,” said I, “I am a poor letter writer.”

“I read each ten times over,” she said.

I kissed her hand in acknowledgment.  Then I rose, lit a cigarette and walked about the room.  Judith shook out her skirts and settled herself comfortably among the sofa-cushions.

“Well, what crimes have you been committing the past few weeks?”

A wandering minstrel was harping “Love’s Sweet Dream” outside the public-house below.  I shut the window, hastily.

“Nothing so bad as that,” said I.  “He ought to be hung and his wild harp hung behind him.”