I should love to stay all the summer with my old friend, It seems that only from such a remote solitude can one view things mundane in the right perspective, and in their true proportion.  One would see how important or unimportant portant in the cosmos was the agricultural ant’s dream of three millimetres and an aphis compared with the aspirations of the English labourer.  One would justly focus the South African millionaire, Sandy McGrath and the ram, and bring them to their real lowest common denominator.  One would even be able to gauge the value of a History of Renaissance Morals.  The benefits I should derive from a long sojourn are incalculable, but my new responsibilities call me back to London and its refracting and distorting atmosphere.  If I had dwelt here for fifty years I should have perceived that Carlotta was but a speck in the whirlwind of human dust whose ultimate destiny was immaterial.  As my five days’ visit, however, has not advanced me to that pitch of wisdom, I am foolishly concerned in my mind as to her welfare, and anxious to dissolve the triumvirate, Miss Griggs, Stenson, and Antoinette, whom I have entrusted with the reins of government.

A month ago, in similar circumstances, I should have railed at Fate and anathematised Carlotta from the tip of her pink toes to the gold and bronze glory of her hair.  But I am growing more kindly disposed towards Carlotta, and taking a keen interest in her spiritual development.

An inner voice, an ironical, sardonic inner voice with which there is no arguing, tells me that I am a hypocrite; that an interest in Carlotta’s spiritual development is a nice, comforting, high-sounding phrase which has deluded philosophic guardians of female youth for many generations.

“What does it matter to you whether she has a soul or not,” says the voice, “provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play cribbage with you afterwards?”

Well, what on earth does it matter?

July 21st.

She was at Euston to meet me.  As soon as she saw my face at the carriage window she left Stenson and flew up the platform like a pretty tame animal, and when I alighted hung on my arms and frisked and gamboled around me in excess of joy.

“So you are glad to have me back, Carlotta?” I asked, as we were driving home.

She sidled up against me in her terrier fashion.

“Oh, ye-es,” she cooed.  “The day was night without you.”

“That is the oriental language of exaggeration,” I said.  But all the same it was pleasant to hear, and the soft notes of her voice coiled themselves, as music sometimes dus, around my heart.

“I love dear Seer Marcous,” she said.

I put my arm round her waist for a moment, as one would do to a child.

“You are a good little girl, Carlotta.  That is to say,” I added, remembering my responsibilities, “if you have been good.  Have you?”