She reads everything that she ought, and by some subtle influence compels publishers to bind attractively everything that she ought to read. If I buy a new book it is as likely as not dingy in hue; but if Azure buys one it is like herself, winning and gay. Her shelves smile. She likes little books, and has a dozen little table-stands for them. Her flowers are perfection--just a few in each glass. On the larger table is a dwarf Japanese tree spreading its gnarled and venerable branches for a Liliputian smithy to shelter beneath; it is a hundred and fifty years old. On the walls are a few coloured wood blocks, a water colour or so, a Japanese print here and there, and the mask of the dead girl from the Morgue. Azure was not there when I entered. The cleverest women are not. Having given me time to look round and catch the note, she came in, or at least suddenly she was in the room. Had I been blind and deaf I should have known it. She has a presence: she vibrates. Sancho Panza the wise, who, it is on record, liked a man to be a man and a woman a woman, would have liked Azure Verity; but he would have marvelled too at the fine flower that civilisation has produced. For art has gone to her making as much as nature. Indeed, it is not the natural woman that she makes one think of, but this other and more formidable creation, the woman evolved from luxurious modern conditions: the woman who sets Greenlanders hunting rare arctic creatures that she may be warm, and brown peasants toiling in the vineyards about Rheims that she may drink bubbling wine and be gay, and chemists distilling perfumes from flowers that she may exhale fragrance, and Persian divers plunging for pearls that she may emphasise the beauty of her neck. But Azure, though her salary and her wealthy spoiling friends can bring all those luxuries to her slender white hand, is in no way the victim of them. She accepts them naturally, but she keeps herself simple too--impulsive and ardent in her sympathies, very generous, and so ready for an adventure that she would be prepared to go through with it entirely on bread and cheese. "Now," she said, after tea had been taken away and the room had gained the composure necessary for more intimate talk, "now tell me about your Naomi." "What am I to say?" I replied. "She is very attractive," said Azure. "Do you think so?" I said diffidently. (I certainly think so, but I was not particularly anxious to hear others say so too.) "Why isn't she married?" was Azure's next question. "She has not been asked, I suppose," I said. "Do you mean to tell me that no one has proposed to her? It's not conceivable." "Not to my knowledge," I said. "How absurd!" she answered reflectively. "There is a girl born to be a wife, and no one has the sense.... While I..." she broke off. "Naturally," I said. "Well," she exclaimed, "what are we to do?" "Do?" "Yes, how are we to get her married?" "But why?" I said as bravely as I could.