Page:Far from the Maddening Girls.djvu/54

 passed much time in the company of an Angora cat you have probably experienced much the same sensations which are wont to affect me in the society of a girl. There is the same impenetrable calm, the same simultaneous purring and sharpening of claws, the same abrupt transition from an attitude of the utmost friendliness to one of the most humiliating disdain. I beg to be understood as speaking exclusively in metaphor when I say that both jump into my lap when I don’t want them, and persist in jumping down when I do. Above all, with neither do I feel wholly assured as to what is going to happen next.

No conversation can be entirely free from embarrassment in which you are uncertain of your companion’s point of view. As regards Miss Berrith, I found that I was constantly making remarks which appeared to me to be as clear as a mirror when they left my lips. A breath from her, and — well, you know the effect of a breath upon a mirror. I was forever