"Ah dear Sarah, you must LEAVE me this person here!" In his desire to avoid all vulgar retorts, to show how, even perversely, he clung to his rag of reason, he had softly almost wailed this plea.

Yet he knew it to be perhaps the most positive declaration he had ever made in his life, and his visitor's reception of it virtually gave it that importance.

"That's exactly what I'm delighted to do.

God knows WE don't want her! You take good care not to meet," she observed in a still higher key, "my question about their life.

If you do consider it a thing one can even SPEAK of, I congratulate you on your taste!" The life she alluded to was of course Chad's and Madame de Vionnet's, which she thus bracketed together in a way that made him wince a little; there being nothing for him but to take home her full intention.