The ghost of a “hou!” came from Carlotta. She composed herself immediately.
“I often used to think of Polyphemus and Seer Marcous and Antoinette,” she said, musingly. “And then I wished I was back. I have been very wicked.”
She put her elbows on the table, and framing her face with her hands looked at me, and shook her head.
“Oh, you are good! Oh, you are good!”
“Go on with your dinner, my child,” said I, “and wonder at the genius of Antoinette who has managed to cook it and look after you at the same time.”
She obeyed meekly. I watched her eat. She was famished. I learned that she had had nothing since the early morning coffee and roll. In spite of pain, I was curiously flattered by her return. I represented something to her, after all—even though the instinct of the prodigal cat had driven her hither. I am sure it had never crossed her mind that my doors might be shut against her. Her first words were, “I have come home.” The first thing she did when we went into the drawing-room after dinner was to fondle my hand and lay it against her cheek and say, with a deep sigh:
“I am so happy.”
However shallow her butterfly nature was, these things came from its depths. No man can help feeling pleased at a child’s or an animal’s implicit trust in him. And the pleasure is of the purest. He feels that unreasoning intuition has penetrated to some latent germ of good in his nature, and for the moment he is disarmed of evil. Carlotta, then, came blindly to what was best in me. In her thoughts she sandwiched me between the cat and the cook: well, in most sandwiches the mid-ingredient is the most essential.
She curled herself up in the familiar sofa-corner, and as it was a chilly night I sent for a wrap which I threw over her limbs.
“See, I have the dear red slippers,” she remarked, arching her instep.