For my part, however, I am
content to be beyond the reach of Delphine's great arm. I must
write to Judith. I shall have to explain Carlotta; but for that
I think I shall wait until she becomes a little more explicable.
In dealing with women it is well to employ discrimination. You
are never quite sure whether they are not merely simple geese or
the most complex of created beings. Perhaps they are such a
curious admixture that you cannot tell at a given moment which
side, the simple or the complex, you are touching. May not there
be the deepest of all allegories in Eve standing midway between
the innocent apple and the guileful serpent? I shall have to see
more of Carlotta before I can safely explain her to Judith.
At any rate she is no longer attired like an odalisque of the
Second Empire, and Mrs. McMurray has saved her from the
lamentable errors of taste shown by the female mountebank of
sixteenth century France. My excellent friend safely delivered
up an exhausted and bewildered charge at half-past seven last
evening, assuring me that her task had been easy, and that her
anticipations of it being the day of her life had been fulfilled.
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