As my cigarette had gone out, I threw it with some peevishness into the grate. Judith’s expression had changed from mock to real gravity. She sat bolt upright and looked at me somewhat stonily.
“What in the world do you mean, Marcus?”
“What I say. I’m saddled with the responsibility of a child of nature as unsophisticated and perplexing as Voltaire’s Huron. She’s English and she came from a harem in Syria, and she is as beautiful as the houris she believes in and is unfortunately precluded from joining. One of these days I shall be teaching her her catechism. I have already washed her face. Kindly pity me as the innocent victim of fantastic circumstances.”
“I don’t see why I should pity you,” said Judith.
I felt I had not explained Carlotta tactfully. If there are ten ways of doing a thing I have noticed that I invariably select the one way that is wrong. I perceived that somehow or other the very contingency I had feared had come to pass. I had prejudiced Judith against Carlotta. I had aroused the Ishmaelite—her hand against every woman and every woman’s hand against her—that survives in all her sex.
“My dear Judith,” said I, “if a wicked fairy godmother had decreed that a healthy rhinoceros should be my housemate you would have extended me your sympathy. But because Fate has inflicted on me an equally embarrassing guest in the shape of a young woman—”
“My dear Marcus,” interrupted Judith, “the healthy rhinoceros would know twenty times as much about women as you do.” This I consider one of the silliest remarks Judith has ever made. “Do,” she continued, “tell me something coherent about this young person you call Carlotta.”
I told the story from beginning to end.
“But why in the world did you keep it from me?” she asked.
“I mistrusted the sixth sense of woman,” said I.