"Why are you not here? I am wearing a large straw hat with blue ribbons, and a white dress and a blue sash, like the ingénue in a drawing-room comedy. And there is no one to see me. And the fields are full of flowers, and I pick them, and have no one to give them to. Surely it is the time in all good story-books when the heroine in a white dress and blue sash is sitting on a wall for Prince Charming to pass and see her, and stop suddenly.... But life is a badly constructed novel; uninteresting people walk in and walk out, and all is at contra-tempo, like a Brahms Hungarian Dance.
"Prince Charming, why have you gone three thousand miles away?"
"Good-morning again.
"This is a divine day—cool winds and curtseying grasses.
"I am still here, living on herbs and sunsets and memories of things that have not been. You are a thing that has not been. Perhaps that is why you are so much in my thoughts. I have many friends whom I seldom think of. I have a few lovers whom I never think of. And I have you who are nothing, and whom I always think of. It is absurd and wonderful.
"My lovers! You ask me who they are and why I have them. I have them because they make me look pretty. I look pretty when I laugh. A woman's beauty depends entirely upon how much she is loved. Did you not know that? The best 'fard pour la beauté des dames' is other people's adoration.
"My lovers therefore have their use, but they are not entertaining. They are uniformly sad or angry. Yet I am good to my lovers. I let them trot in and out of their tempers like nice tame animals that nobody need mind. I do not require them to perform in public; I sit and watch their innocent tricks with kind and wondering eyes.
"Et vous, mon Prince Charmant? What of you? Who are you making to look prettier? Whose cheeks are you tinting? Whose eyes are you brightening? Whose heart are you making to flutter by the hurry of yours? Who smiles and dimples and blushes for your sake? I suppose you are falling in love with your fair countrywomen—tall, tennis-playing English girls, with cool, unkissed mouths and white, inexperienced hands. Ah, Prince Charming, whom do you love?
"Eve."