Another pleaisng feature of the day’s jaunt has been the absence of the appeal to sentimentality which Judith of late, especially since her return from Paris, has been overfond of making.  This idle habit of mind, for such it is in reality, has been arrested by an intellectual interest.  One of her great friends is Willoughby, the economic statistician, who in his humorous moments, writes articles for popular magazines, illustrated by scale diagrams.  He will draw, for instance, a series of men representing the nations of the world, and varying in bulk and stature according to the respective populations; and over against these he will set a series of pigs whose sizes are proportionate to the amount of pork per head eaten by the different nationalities.  To these queer minds that live on facts (I myself could as easily thrive on a diet of egg-shells) this sort of pictorial information is peculiarly fascinating.  But Judith, who like most women has a freakish mental as well as physical digestion, delights in knowing how many hogs a cabinet minister will eat during, a lifetime, and how much of the earth’s surface could be scoured by the world’s yearly output of scrubbing-brushes.  I don’t blame her for it any more than I blame her for a love of radishes, which make me ill; it is not as if she had no wholesome tastes.  On the contrary, I commend her.  Now, Willoughby, it seems, has found the public appetite so great for these thought-saving boluses of knowledge—­unpleasant drugs, as it were, put up into gelatine capsules—­that he needs assistance.  He has asked Judith to devil for him, and I have to-day persuaded her to accept his offer.  It will be an excellent thing for the dear woman.  It will be an absorbing occupation.  It will divert the current of her thoughts from the sentimentality that I deprecate, and provided she does not serve up hard-boiled facts to me at dinner, she will be the pleasanter companion.

The only return to it was when I kissed her at parting.

“That is the first, Marcus, for twelve hours,” she said; very sweetly, it is true—­but still reproachfully.

But Sacred Name of a Little Good Man! (as the depraved French people say), what is the use of this continuous osculation between rational beings of opposite sexes who set out to enjoy themselves?  If only St. Paul, in the famous passage when he says there is a time for this and a time for that, had mentioned kissing, he would have done a great deal of practical good.

July 13th.

To-night, for the first time since I came into the family estates (such as they are), I feel the paralysis of aspiration occasioned by poverty.  If I were very rich, I would buy the two next houses, pull them down and erect on the site a tower forty foot high.  At the very top would be one comfortable room to be reached by a lift, and in this room I could have my being, while it listed me, and be secure from all kinds of incursions and interruptions.  Antoinette’s