Delia draws her breath in all this, and opens a wicked Irish eye upon it--ah, what Delia doesn’t see!--and is to me the gay flower of it, delicately exhaling an essence of Paris. I approve myself of just a suspicion of essence of Paris. We are none of us beasts of the field. I regret to say that she misquotes. Her gloves fit perfectly, and she carries herself like a lily of the field, but she misquotes. It is the single defect upon what she would be annoyed to hear me call a lovely character. I mention it because it is the only one. If there were others, I should allow them to be taken for granted, and protect myself from the suspicion of exaggerated language. That does not look like an absolutely serious statement, but if I am writing nonsense it is entirely the fault of Delia. She is packed with nonsense like a siphon, and if you sit much out-of-doors you become very absorbent. She had been paying calls, and I was obliged to restore her with vermouth and a biscuit. She was bored and fatigued, and she buried her nose in her roses and closed her eyes expressively. “The ladies of India,” she remarked, “are curiously alike. Is it our mode of thought? Is it because we have the same kind of husbands?” “Some are much better than others,” I interrupted. “I saw eleven of us,” she went on with depression, “one after the other, this morning. I couldn’t help thinking of articles on a counter marked ‘all this size five and elevenpence-ha’penny.’” “Never mind, Delia,” said I, “you are not at all alike.” “Oh, and nobody,” she hastened to apologize, “could be less alike than _you_.” “And yet we are quite different,” I replied; and Delia, with a glance of reproach and scorn and laughter said, “You jackass!” Now in anybody else’s mouth this term would be almost opprobrious, but from Delia’s it drops affectionately. It is an acknowledgment, a compliment, it helps to lighten the morning. It is not everybody who could call one a jackass with impunity, but it is not everybody who would think of doing it. I should not wish the epithet to become the fashion, but when Delia offers it I roll it under my tongue. “I am convinced,” said I, “that there is nothing in the world so valuable as personality. I mean, of course, to other people. As you justly remark, Delia, we are round pebbles on this coral strand, worn smooth by rubbing against nothing but each other. It is an obscure and little regarded form of the great Imperial sacrifice, but I wish somebody would call attention to it in the _Daily Mail_ and wring a tear from the British public. You have still a slight unevenness of surface, my Delia, and that is why I love you. If you had a good sharp corner or two, I should never let you out of my sight.” “And to think,” said Delia, finely, “how little, in England, they prize and value their precious angular old maids!”