'I hope you're not one of those people who require the glare of the sun always. I like the sun in its proper place out of doors,' and while thinking of an appropriate answer Dick strove to find his way through the numerous pieces of furniture littered over the carpet. 'Come and sit on the sofa beside me.' 'If you'll allow me,' he answered, 'I will sit in this armchair. I shall be able to devote myself more completely to the hearing of your poem.' It was not polite to refuse to sit beside the lady, but Dick contrived to convey that her presence would trouble his intellectual enjoyment, and the slight displeasure which the refusal had caused vanished out of the painted face. This first success almost succeeded in screwing up Dick's courage to the point of asking her if he might remove the flower vase that stood on the cabinet behind him, but he did not dare, and at every moment he seemed to recognize a new scent. An odour of burning pastilles drifted from a distant corner into a zone of patchouli in which the lady seemed to have encircled herself and which her every movement seemed to spread in more and more violent flavours, till Dick began to think he would not be able to hold out till the end of the lady's narrative. Patchouli always gave him a headache, but the word 'opera' restored him to himself, and with lips quivering like a cat watching a sparrow he heard that the subject of her opera was derived from her own life; and telling him that it could not be understood without a relation of the events that had given it birth, she drew her legs up on the sofa, and leaning her head against the back commenced in a low, cooing, but not disagreeable voice to tell of her first love adventure. 'I might almost call my departure for Bulgaria, some ten years ago, a spiritual adventure,' she said. The departure for Bulgaria seemed full of interest, but from Dick's point of view the leading up to the departure was unduly prolonged, and he found it difficult to listen with any show of interest to Mrs. Forest's assurances that until she met the Bulgarian she had thought that babies were found in parsley-beds or under gooseberry-bushes, and this innocence of mind was so inherent in her that the Bulgarian had not succeeded altogether in robbing her of it. 'Nor, indeed, did he ever attempt to do so,' she continued. 'Our friendship was founded purely on the intellect.'