Besides, you are here to amuse me." This speech, as she made it, was pleasantly audacious and clever.

I laughed, and made a gesture of mock dissent, and she added: "Now I have finished my lecture.

Please tie my shoe-lace there, and then, as I said, amuse me.

Oh, you can, if you choose! You are clever when you like to be.

Only, this time, do not let it be a professor's wife who foolishly destroys herself, and cuts short what might have been a brilliant career." On the instant I determined to probe deeper into her life, and try her nerve, by telling a story with enough likeness to her own (if she was the wife of Boyd Madras) to affect her acutely; though I was not sure I could succeed.