charming. Then, after a week, you 'll tell me what she is."
"Perhaps I should n't. My friend there has known her a week, and I don't think he is yet able to give an accurate account of her."
He raised his glass again, and after looking awhile, "I'm afraid your friend is a little—what do you call it?—a little 'soft.' Poor fellow! he's not the first. I've never known this lady that she had not some eligible youth hovering about in some such attitude as that, undergoing the softening process. She looks wonderfully well, from here. It's extraordinary how those women last!"
"You don't mean, I take it, when you talk about 'those women', that Madame Blumenthal is not embalmed, for duration, in a certain dilution of respect ability?"
"Yes and no. The sort of atmosphere that surrounds her is entirely of her own making. There is no reason, in her antecedents, that people should lower their voice when they speak of her. But some women are never at their ease till they have given some odd twist or other to their position before the world. The attitude of upright virtue is unbecoming, like sitting too straight in a fauteuil. Don't ask me for opinions, however; content yourself with a few facts, and an anecdote. Madame Blumenthal is Prus-
