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' She is
eighteen and her name is Carlotta. There!"
As my cigarette had gone out, I threw it with some peevishness
into the grate. Judith's expression had changed from mock to
real gravity. She sat bolt upright and looked at me somewhat
stonily.
"What in the world do you mean, Marcus?"
"What I say. I'm saddled with the responsibility of a child of
nature as unsophisticated and perplexing as Voltaire's Huron.
She's English and she came from a harem in Syria, and she is as
beautiful as the houris she believes in and is unfortunately
precluded from joining. One of these days I shall be teaching
her her catechism. I have already washed her face. Kindly pity
me as the innocent victim of fantastic circumstances."
"I don't see why I should pity you," said Judith.
I felt I had not explained Carlotta tactfully. If there are ten
ways of doing a thing I have noticed that I invariably select the
one way that is wrong. I perceived that somehow or other the
very contingency I had feared had come to pass.


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