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for the sense of relief.
This morning came an evening dress for Carlotta which has taken a
month in the making. This, I am given to understand, is
delirious speed for a London dressmaker. To celebrate the
occasion I engaged a box at the Empire for this evening and
invited her to dine with me. I sent a note of invitation round
to Mrs. McMurray.
Carlotta did not come down at halfpast seven. We waited. At
last Mrs. McMurray went up to the room and presently returned
shepherding a shy, blushing, awkward, piteous young person who
had evidently been crying. My friend signed to me to take no
notice. I attributed the child's lack of gaiety to the ordeal
of sitting for the first time in her life at a civilised
dinnertable. She scarcely spoke and scarcely ate. I complimented
her on her appearance and she looked beseechingly at me, as if I
were scolding her. After dinner Mrs. McMurray told me the reason
of her distress. She had found Carlotta in tears. Never could she
face me in that low cut evening bodice. It outraged her modesty.
It could not be the practice of European women to bare themselves
so immodestly before men. It was only the evidence of her
visitor's own plump neck and shoulders that convinced her, and
she suffered herself to be led downstairs in an agony of self
consciousness.
When we entered the box at the Empire, a troupe of female
acrobats were doing their turn. Carlotta uttered a gasp of
dismay, blushed burning red, and shrank back to the door. There
is no pretence about Carlotta. She was shocked to the roots of
her being.
They are naked! she said, quiveringly.
For heaven's sake, explain, said I to Mrs. McMurray, and I beat
a hasty retreat to the promenade.
When I returned, Carlotta had been soothed down. She was
watching some performing dogs with intense wonderment and
delight. For the rest of the evening she sat spellbound. The
exiguity of costume in the ballet caused her indeed to glance in
a frightened sort of way at Mrs. McMurray, who reassured her with
a friendly smile, but the music and the maze of motion and the
dazzle of colour soon held her senses captive, and when the
curtain came down she sighed like one awaking from a dream.
As we drove home, she asked me:
Is it like that all day long? Oh, please to let me live there!
A nice English girl of eighteen would not flaunt unconcerned
about my drawingroom in a shameless dressinggown, and crinkle
up her toes in front of me; still less would she tell me

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