when I heard someone approach, and Miss Brandon asked if she might sit down ne

plained. "That is to say, more

whether sh

but never waits for the answer. I feel he has made up his mind ab

at they ta

," she

, I suppos

d read them. I could feel Miss Br

, but she is coming back then. We nearly laughed at one moment. It was awful. They were discussing Balzac, and Aunt Netty said that Balzac was a snob like all-and she was just going to say like all novelists, when she caught herself up and said: 'like Thackeray.' Mr. Rudd said that Bal

ad noticed anything. He didn't seem

he suspected we were laughing at him. Aunt Netty manages him perfectly. He loves her. She knows exactly what to say to

of the profound saying of one of Kipling's women, that the stupidest woman

o were thought to be stupid-was their sudden flashes of lucidity, when they saw things qui

sonality, Rudd was not a clever man. All his cleverness went into his books. I said I thought there were two kinds of writers: those who were better than their

ught she had onl

"loves all authors and

er sentence: "She has neve

aughed and sai

. I haven't. But I feel I am a terrible wet blanket to all Aunt Netty's friends. I can't

er sort of people were poor

riend," she said,

ew friend

go at Florence. He was looking after his mother, who was ill and who lived at Florence. We used to meet him often,

what he

on't know him at all really. I have only seen him twice. But one didn't have to plough through the usual com

d what

n't qui

ing, but I certainly did not know him. Miss Brandon said s

a talk I felt as if I knew him intimately, as if I had met him on some other planet, as if we were going on, not as if we were beginning. I suddenly found myself telling him things I had never told anyone. Of course, this does

e people thought I didn't count, and that as I co

the telephone. You know how difficult that is. I should think people tell you t

ieved this w

lic," she said. "Isn't t

haps, a Pole. The

him. He was not a soldier, but he had been to the Manchurian War. He had lived in the Far East a g

id something had been cut out of his life. He had been

pposed he s

had once been to England as a child for a few weeks to the Isl

rome K. Jerome

said, "Mis

Mrs. Lennox's acquaintance.

out Tolstoi. Tolstoi is one

etailed Rudd's views on the

ars now and then like an Airedale terrier. Aunt Netty doesn't want him. Mr. Rudd is enough for

Kouragine kno

had never met him,

udd thought about

Rudd said it was catching. People who lived in Ireland became Irish, and people who lived in Russia became Russian. Then Aunt Netty said Princess Kouragine had lived in F

someone walke

ranitski," she said

e park with the dry lawn-tennis court, those birch trees and some straggling fir trees on

same spot to me I had imagined it like the

I was qu

could make the character of a landscape plain, not only to a p

pe. "What I call the orthodox kind. I hear James Rudd, the writer, is staying here. He has a gift f

his books?

yes. When he is psychological I find t

on said. "He spoils things by seein

, like Miss Austen and Henry James, or else very, very bad ones. He could not read any novel bec

d him if he would

frightful?

t think he was

o make his acquaintance. He h

laining the Russian cha

s Italian, and as he had lived very little in Russia and spoke R

ould make the explanatio