I don’t understand Judith. It doesn’t very greatly matter. Many things I don’t understand, the spiritual attitude towards himself, for example, of the intelligent juggler who expends his life’s energies in balancing a cue and three billiard-balls on the tip of his nose. But I know that Judith understands me, and therein lies the advantage I gain from our intimacy. She gauges, to an absurdly subtle degree, the depth of my affection. She is really an incomparable woman. So many insist upon predilection masquerading as consuming passion. There is nothing theatrical about Judith. Yet to-day she appeared a little touchy, moody, unsettled. She broke another pleasant spell of fireside silence, that followed expiation of my offence, by suddenly calling my name. “Yes?” said I, inquiringly. “I want to tell you something. Please promise me you won’t be vexed.” “My dear Judith,” said I, “my great and imperial namesake, in whose meditations I have always found ineffable comfort, tells me this: ‘If anything external vexes you, take notice that it is not the thing which disturbs you, but your notion about it, which notion you may dismiss at once, if you please!’ So I promise to dismiss all my notions of your disturbing communication and not to be vexed.” “If there is one platitudinist I dislike more than another, it is Marcus Aurelius,” said Judith. I laughed. It was very comfortable to sit before the fire, which protested, in a fire’s cheery, human way, against the depression of the murky world outside, and to banter Judith. “I can quite understand it,” I said. “A man sucks in the consolations of philosophy; a woman solaces herself with religion.” “I can do neither,” she replied, changing her attitude with an exaggerated shaking down of skirts. “If I could, I shouldn’t want to go away.” “Go away?” I echud. “Yes. You mustn’t be vexed with me. I haven’t got a cook--” “No one would have thought it, from the luncheon you gave me, my dear.” The alcoholized domestic, by the way, was sent out, bag and baggage, last evening, when she was sober enough to walk. “And so it is a convenient opportunity,” Judith continued, ignoring my compliment--and rightly so; for as soon as it had been uttered, I was struck by an uneasy conviction that she had herself disturbed the French caterers in the Tottenham Court Road from their Sabbath repose in order to provide me with food. “I can shut up the flat without any fuss. I am never happy at the beginning of a London season. I know I’m silly,” she went on, hurriedly. “If I could stand your dreadful Marcus Aurelius I might be wiser--I don’t mind the rest of the year; but in the season everybody is in town--people I used to know and mix with--I meet them in the streets and they cut me and it--hurts--and so I want to get away somewhere by myself. When I get sick of solitude I’ll come back.” One of her quick, graceful movements brought her to her knees by my side. She caught my hand.