“But why didn’t you tell me before?” “Because I didn’t realise, my darling. I didn’t know I loved you--and how can a girl know a thing like that? Oh, Hugo, you are so sweet! What fun to have you for keeps! And it will be nice to chew bits of you now and then--oh, what fun we’ll have! Dear Hugo....” “And you said, Shirley, that you would never, never marry me!” “I didn’t know myself, dear--nor you! Until, after the fifth time, when you went away saying that you would never come back. And then I was very sorry, Hugo.” “Oh, by the way,” he said, “here’s a note from George--about taking you to _Loyalties_ to-night.” She read the note. “Oh!” she said. “What does he say?” he asked. She tore up the note. “Only that he’s got a box for _Loyalties_, and that I may ask whom I like----” “Thanks so much, Shirley. I’d love to come. It will improve my mind.” Now this was the note from George Tarlyon to his little sister, Shirley St. George: “Shirley, how dare you go about London refusing to marry such of my friends, if any, who ask you? ‘Never, never,’ indeed! Remember, Shirley, that there’s only one bigger lie than ‘never, never,’ and that is ‘always, always.’” “Oh!” thought Shirley. “Fat lot he knows about it!” But all the same, she never said ‘always, always’; she just thought it. The rest of this story is quite uninteresting, for Hugo and Shirley were happy ever after: which is, unfortunately, more than most people are, what with first one thing and then another.... IX: CONSUELO BROWN It is told by young Raymond Paris, the novelist: A few days after my arrival at the hotel on the hill behind Algiers, where I intended to stay some time for reasons best known to myself, I wrote to a friend in London, Ralph Trevor, telling him of the place and the people, and, in particular, of the people in my hotel. I must explain that I am a traveller of ignoble inclinations, so that my descent on Africa was in every way very dissimilar from that of Mrs. Rosita Forbes. I cannot lay claim to a very adventurous spirit--though, of course, I am always ready to make a fourth, a third, or a second, as the case may be but only too seldom is. What I mean to say is that on my arrival in Algiers, instead of hiring a room so situated in the town that I could see or smell its Arab activities, I straightway made for the large building which dominates the hill of Mustapha: and which has about as much relation to Algeria as the Carlton at Cannes, the Paris at Monte Carlo, or the Normandy at Deauville.