more freedom that there is no one left to contradict. People used enormous coloured silk handkerchiefs in that remote period, when you threw yours with such Oriental complacency, and the odalisques who picked it up are probably to-day so old and stiff they could not bend their backs to save their lives. But were they really as fond, and fair, and faithful as they seem to you now? Had they no caprices to chill, no whims to worry, no rivals on hand, to drive you mad? Like the sea, those eyes that look so deep and blue at a distance, are green and turbid and full of specks when you come quite close. Was it all sunshine with Mary, all roses with Margaret, all summer with Jane? What figures the modern women make of themselves, you say. How they offend your eye, those bare cheek-bones, those clinging skirts, those hateful chignons! Ah! the cheeks no longer hang out a danger-signal
