I couldn't have said what I felt about her except that she was undefended; from the first of my sitting with her there after dinner, under the stars--that was a week at Folkestone of balmy nights and muffled tides and crowded chairs--I became aware both that protection was wholly absent from her life and that she was wholly indifferent to its absence.

The odd thing was that she was not appealing: she was abjectly, divinely conceited, absurdly fantastically pleased.

Her beauty was as yet all the world to her, a world she had plenty to do to live in.

Mrs.Meldrum told me more about her, and there was nothing that, as the centre of a group of giggling, nudging spectators, Flora wasn't ready to tell about herself.

She held her little court in the crowd, upon the grass, playing her light over Jews and Gentiles, completely at ease in all promiscuities.