“Who is Mr. Balfour, sir?” said Aramatilda.
“Do you know?” I asked Mr. Titch.
My landlord looked solemn, as he always did when speaking of the great.
“There is the Right Honorable Arthur Balfour, nephew to the Marquis—”
“Yes, yes,” I interrupted; “but I do not think that admirable statesman would confide his purchases to me.”
“Then, sir,” said Mr. Titch, with an air of washing his hands of all lesser personages, “I give it up.”
“I wish you could,” I replied, “but I fear it must remain here for the present.”
They left my room casting lingering glances at the monstrosity, and once I was alone my curiosity quickly died away. I felt lonely and depressed. Parting from a houseful of guests and the cheerful air of a country-house, I realized how foreign, after all, this city was to me. I had acquaintances; I could find my way through the streets; but what else? Ah, if I were in Paris now! That name spelled Heaven as I said it over and over to myself.
I said it the oftener that I might not say “woman.” What mockery in that word! Yet I felt that I must find relief. I opened my journal and this is what I wrote:
“To d'Haricot from d'Haricot.—Foolish friend, beware of those things they call eyes, of that substance they term hair, of that abstraction known as a smile, and, above all, beware of those twin lies styled lips. They kiss but in the intervals of kissing others; they speak but to deceive. Nevermore shall I regard a woman more seriously than I do this pretty, revolving ring of cigarette smoke.