Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/131

 ing others, when one permitted them to be entirely themselves. One was born with oneself and, if one were intelligent, one got to know oneself thoroughly at the age of four. Thereafter, a life of boredom intervened until the grave yawned, unless one surrounded oneself with people who were individual enough to comport themselves with some eccentricity, not to say perversity. Zimbule was not cut to any conventional pattern. She filled Campaspe's bill.

Soon the child began to notice the difference between stuffs, the difference between patterns and colours. Warm as it was, she affected an interest in kinkob and camel's-hair shawls, and she became aware of the sacred names of Reboux, Premet, Chéruit, and Maria Guy.

I adore her! Campaspe ejaculated one day. I can never cease to thank God that we captured her from those embracing snakes. She is the most amusing person we've ever discovered. She's wholly natural, wholly an animal. I've never met a woman like her. When she's hungry she eats; when she's sleepy, she sleeps; and when she's amorous, she loves. She's imitative like an animal too. Having observed that I wear geraniums, she's clever enough to realize that geraniums are not her flower. When I called for her the other day she was sporting a great bouquet of orchids. Bunny, of course, can never pay for them and so I have taken to sending her orchids every morning, developing an ex-