My assistance consisted
in lighting the gas-stove beneath a waterless kettle. After that
I sprawled against the dresser and, with my heart in my mouth,
watched her cut thin bread-and-butter in a woman's deliciously
clumsy way. Once, as the bright blade went perilously near her
palm, I drew in my breath.
"A man would never dream of doing it like that!" I cried, in
rebuke.
She calmly dropped the wafer on to the plate and handed me the
knife and loaf.
"Do it your way," she said, with a smile of mock humility.
I did it my way, and cut my finger.
"The devil's in the knife!" I cried. "But that's the right way."
Judith said nothing, but bound up my wound, and, like the
well-conducted person of the ballad, went on cutting
bread-and-butter. Her smile, however, was provoking.
"And all this time," I said, half an hour later, "you haven't
told me where you are going."
"Paris. To stay with Delphine Carrere."
"I thought you said you wanted solitude."
I have met Delphine Carrere -_brave femme_ if ever there was one,
and the loyalest soul in the world, the only one of Judith's
early women friends who has totally ignored the fact of the
Sacred Cap of Good Repute having been thrown over the windmills
(indeed who knows whether dear, golden-hearted Delphine herself
could conscientiously write the magic initials S.
Pages:
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48