Page:Far from the Maddening Girls.djvu/70

 and beautiful thing the masculine point of view would seem to border upon the inadequate.”

“I should be the last man in the world,” I exclaimed resentfully, “to call the violet ‘a thundering pretty flower.’”

“Oh, we all have our virtues,” said Miss Berrith airily. “The gentleman in question, for instance, has been married thirty years.”

If a ruler of Para rubber has ever been applied to your knuckles you will recall the effect produced as a particularity of sensation as distressing as it is abrupt. I had not experienced it since I was a child.

A week later I assembled in a valise the remainder of my belongings in town, squared accounts with my landlady, cast one brief unregretful look at the wicker furniture, the dispirited curtains, and the lamentable plush table-cover of my late apartment, and took final flight for “Sans Souci.”

What a night it was, to be sure, that first