“It makes me look so white—­oh, there was a girl at Bude who had a gold locket—­and it lay upon her bones—­you could count them.  I am glad I have no bones.  I am quite soft—­feel.”

She clasped my fingers and pressed their tips into the firm young flesh below her throat.

“Yes,” said I, with some huskiness in my voice, “your turquoise can sleep there very pleasantly.  See, I will kiss it to bring you good luck.”

She cooed with pleasure.  “I don’t think any one kissed the locket of the girl at Bude.  She was too thin.  And too old; she must have been thirty!  Now,” she added, lifting up the locket, “you will kiss the place, too, where it is to lie.”

I looked for a moment into her eyes.  Seeing me hesitate, they grew pathetic.

“Oh-h,” she said, reproachfully.

I know I am a fool.  I know that Pasquale would have hurled his sarcasms at me.  I know that the whole of her deliciousness was mine for the taking—­mine for ever and ever.  If I had loved her less passionately I would have kissed her young throat lightly with a jest.  But to have kissed her thus with such longing as mine behind my lips would have been an outrage.

I lifted her to her feet, and rose and turned away, laughing unsteadily.

“No, my dear,” said I, “that would be—­unsuitable.”

The bathos of the word made me laugh louder.  Carlotta, aware that a joke was in the air, joined in my mirth, and her laughter rang fresh.

“What is the suitable way of kissing?”

I took her hand and saluted it in an eighteenth century manner.

“This,” said I.

“Oh-h,” said Carlotta.  “That is so dull.”  She caught up Polyphemus and buried her face in his fur.  “That’s the way I should like to be kissed.”

“The man you love, my dear,” said I, “will doubtless do it.”

She made a little grimace.

“Oh, then, I shall have to wait such a long time.”

“You needn’t,” said I, taking her hands again and speaking very seriously.  “Can’t you learn to love a man, give him your whole heart and all your best and sweetest thoughts?”

“I would marry any nice man if you gave me to him,” she answered.

“It would not matter who he was?  Anyone would do?”

“Why, of course,” said Carlotta.

“And any one wanting to marry you could kiss you as you kissed Polyphemus.”

“Oh-h, he would have to be nice—­not like Mustapha.”

I turned away with a sigh and lit a cigarette, while Carlotta curled herself up on the sofa and inspected her face and necklace in the silver mirror.  In a moment she was talking to the cat, who had jumped on her lap and with arched back was rubbing himself against her.

Soon the touch of sadness was lost in the happy sight of her and the happy thought that my house was no longer left to me desolate.  We laughed away the evening.