t for a moment
regret having asked you to come." Presently I had another chance of
talking. I heard myself talk. My feverish anxiety to please rather
touched ME. But I noticed that the eyes of my listener wandered. And
yet I was sorry when the ladies went away. I had a sense of greater
exposure. Men who hadn't seen me saw me now. The Duke, as he came round
to the Duchess' end of the table, must have wondered who I was. But he
shyly offered me his hand as he passed, and said it was so good of me
to come. I had thought of slipping away to put on another shirt and
waistcoat, but had decided that this would make me the more ridiculous.
I sat drinking port--poison to me after champagne, but a lulling
poison--and listened to noblemen with unstained shirtfronts talking
about the Australian cricket match....

'Is Rubicon Bezique still played in England? There was a mania for it at
that time. The floor of Keeb's Palladio-Gargantuan hall was dotted with
innumerable little tables. I didn't know how to play. My hostess told me
I must "come and amuse the dear old Duke and Duchess of Mull," and led
me to a remote sofa on which an old gentleman had just sat down beside
an old lady. They looked at me with a dim kind interest. My hostess had
set me and left me on a small gilt chair in front of them. Before going
she had conveyed to them loudly--one of them was very deaf--that I was
"the famous writer." It was a long time before they understood that I
was not a political writer. The Duke asked me, after a troubled pause,
whether I had known "old Mr. Abraham Hayward." The Duchess said I was
too young to have known Mr. Hayward, and asked if I knew her "clever
friend Mr. Mallock." I said I had just been reading Mr. Mallock's new
novel. I heard myself shouting a confused precis of the plot. The place
where we were sitting was near the foot of the great marble staircase.
I said how beautiful the staircase was. The Duchess of Mull said she had
never cared very much for that staircase. The Duke, after a pause, said
he had "often heard old Mr. Abraham Hayward hold a whole dinner table."
There were long and frequent pauses--between which I heard myself
talking loudly, frantically, sinking lower and lower in the esteem of my
small audience. I felt like a man drowning under the eyes of an elderly
couple who sit on the bank regretting that they can offer NO assistance.
Presently the Duke looked at his watch and said to the Duchess that it
was "time