“I read each ten times over,” she said.
I kissed her hand in acknowledgment. Then I rose, lit a cigarette and walked about the room. Judith shook out her skirts and settled herself comfortably among the sofa-cushions.
“Well, what crimes have you been committing the past few weeks?”
A wandering minstrel was harping “Love’s Sweet Dream” outside the public-house below. I shut the window, hastily.
“Nothing so bad as that,” said I. “He ought to be hung and his wild harp hung behind him.”
“You are developing nerves,” said Judith. “Is it a guilty conscience?” She laughed. “You are hiding something from me. I’ve been aware of it all the time.”
“Indeed? How?”
“By the sixth sense of woman!”
Confound the sixth sense of woman! I suppose it has been developed like a cat’s whiskers to supply the deficiency of a natural scent. Also, like the whiskers, it is obtrusive, and a matter for much irritatingly complacent pride. Judith regarded me with a mock magisterial air, and I was put into the dock at once.
“Something has happened,” I said, desperately. “A female woman has come and taken up her residence at 26 Lingfield Terrace. A few weeks ago she ate with her fingers and believed the earth was flat. I found her in the Victoria Embankment Gardens beneath the terrace of the National Liberal Club, and now she lives on chocolate creams and the ‘Child’s Guide to Knowledge.’ She is eighteen and her name is Carlotta. There!”