“I don’t believe you know what sort of a woman I _am_!” she began as soon as he stood before her. “Oh Lord!” Littlemore groaned as he dropped into a chair. Then he added: “Please don’t strike up _that_ air!” “Ah, but it’s exactly what I’ve wanted to say. It’s very important. You don’t know me—you don’t understand me. You think you do—but you don’t.” “It isn’t for the want of your having told me—many many times!” And Littlemore had a hard critical smile, irritated as he was at so austere a prospect. The last word of all was decidedly that Mrs. Headway was a dreadful bore. It was always the last word about such women, who never really deserved to be spared. She glared at him a little on this; her face was no longer the hospitable inn-front with the showy sign of the Smile. The sign had come down; she looked sharp and strained, almost old; the change was complete. It made her serious as he had never seen her—having seen her always only either too pleased or too disgusted. “Yes, I know; men are so stupid. They know nothing about women but what women tell them. And women tell them things on purpose to see how stupid they can be. I’ve told you things like that just for amusement when it was dull. If you believed them it was your own fault. But now I want you really to know.” “I don’t want to know. I know enough.” “How do you mean you know enough?” she cried with all her sincerity. “What business have you to know anything?” The poor little woman, in her passionate purpose, was not obliged to be consistent, and the loud laugh with which Littlemore greeted this must have seemed to her unduly harsh. “You shall know what I want you to know, however. You think me a bad woman—you don’t respect me; I told you that in Paris. I’ve done things I don’t understand, myself, to-day; that I admit as fully as you please. But I’ve completely changed, and I want to change everything. You ought to enter into that, you ought to see what I want. I hate everything that has happened to me before this; I loathe it, I despise it. I went on that way trying—trying one thing and another. But now I’ve got what I want. Do you expect me to go down on my knees to you? I believe I will, I’m so anxious. You can help me—no one else can do a thing; they’re only waiting to see if _he’ll_ do it. I told you in Paris you could help me, and it’s just as true now. Say a good word for me for Christ’s sake! You haven’t lifted your little finger, or I should know it by this time. It will just make the difference. Or if your sister would come and see me I should be all right. Women are pitiless, pitiless, and you’re pitiless too. It isn’t that Mrs. Dolphin’s anything so great, most of my friends are better than that!—but she’s the one woman who _knows_, and every one seems to know she knows. _He_ knows it, and he knows she doesn’t come. So she kills me—she kills me! I understand perfectly what