I can see all this perfectly
well in the calm seclusion of my library. But when I am in her
presence my superiority, like Bob Acres's valour, oozes out through my
finger-tips; I become a besotted idiot; the sense and the sight and
the sound of her overpower me; I proclaim her rich and remarkable
personality; and I bask in her lazy smiles like any silly undergraduate
whose knowledge of women has hitherto been limited to his sisters and
the common little girl at the tobacconist's.
I say I resent it. I resent the low notes in her voice. I resent the
cajolery of the supple twists of her body. I resent her putting her
hands on my shoulders, and, as the twopenny-halfpenny poets say, fanning
my cheek with her breath. If it had not been for that I should never
have promised to go in search of her impossible husband. At any rate, it
is easy to discover his whereabouts. A French bookseller has telegraphed
to Paris for the _Annuaire Officiel de l'Armee Francaise_, the French
Army List. It locates every officer in the French army, and as the
Chasseurs d'Afrique generally chase in Africa, it will tell me the
station in Algeria or Tunisia which Captain Vauvenarde adorns.
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