ly grave
and absent minded.

"Well, I shall die if I don't have a good dinner at once," said Mrs.
Ackroyde. "Is that a Doucet frock, Beryl?"

"No. Count Kalinsky designed it."

"Oh--Igor Kalinksy! Adela, we are in Box B. We must have a powwow
between the acts."

She looked from Lady Sellingworth to Craven and back again. Short, very
handsome, always in perfect health, with brows and eyes which somehow
suggested a wild creature, she had an honest and quite unaffected face.
Her manner was bold and direct. There was something lasting--some said
everlasting--in her atmosphere.

"I cannot conceive of London without Dindie Ackroyde," said Braybrooke,
as Mrs. Ackroyde led the way to the next table and sat down opposite to
Craven.

And they began to talk about people. Craven said very little. Since
the arrival of the other quartet he had begun to feel sensitively
uncomfortable. He realized that already his new friendship for Lady
Sellingworth had "got about," though how he could not imagine. He was
certain that the "old guard" were already beginning to talk of Addie
Sellingworth's "new man." He had seen awareness, that strange feminine
interest which is more than half hostile, in the eyes of both Lady
Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde. Was it impossible, then, in this horrible
whispering gallery of London, to have any privacy of the soul? (He
thought that his friendship really had something of the soul in it.) He
felt stripped by the eyes of those two women at the neighbouring table,
and he glanced at Lady Sellingworth almost furtively, wondering what
she was feeling. But she looked exactly as usual, and was talking with
animation, and he realized that her long habit of the world enabled her
to wear a mask at will. Or was she less sensitive in such matters than
he was?

"How preoccupied you are!" said Miss Van Tuyn's voice in his ear. "You
see I was right. Golf ruins the social qualities in a man."

Then Craven resolutely set himself to be sociable. He even acted a part,
still acutely conscious of the eyes of the "old guard," and almost made
love to Miss Van Tuyn, as a man may make love at a dinner table. He was
sure Lady Sellingworth would not misunderstand him. Whether Miss Van
Tuyn misunderstood him or not did not matter to him at that moment. He
saw her beauty clearly; he was able to note all the fluid fascination of
her delicious youthfulness; the charm of it went to him; and yet he felt
no inclination to waver in his