"YOU women are always so sentimental!" said the Philosopher, leaning back in a comfortable garden chair and lazily flicking off the ash from an excellent cigar;-"You overdo the thing. You carry every emotion to an extreme limit. It shows a lamentable lack of judgment." She listened to him with the tiniest quiver of a smile, but offered no reply. She did not even look at the Philosopher. There were many other things which (apparently) engaged her attention, so that unless you knew her very well, you might have said she was not even aware of the Philosopher's existence. This would have been a mistake, -but no matter! However, there was the garden, to begin with. It was a lovely garden, full of sweet-smelling, old-fashioned flowers. There were roses in such lavish quantity that they seemed to literally blaze upon the old brick walls and rustic pergolas which surrounded and hemmed in the numerous beds and borders set in among the grass.