happy
mean of simplicity and intelligence of which no other race has found the
secret. If Raymond de Chelles had been English he would have been a
mere fox-hunting animal, with appetites but without tastes; but in his
lighter Gallic clay the wholesome territorial savour, the inherited
passion for sport and agriculture, were blent with an openness to finer
sensations, a sense of the come-and-go of ideas, under which one felt
the tight hold of two or three inherited notions, religious, political,
and domestic, in total contradiction to his surface attitude. That the
inherited notions would in the end prevail, everything in his appearance
declared from the distinguished slant of his nose to the narrow forehead
under his thinning hair; he was the kind of man who would inevitably
"revert" when he married. But meanwhile the surface he presented to the
play of life was broad enough to take in the fantastic spectacle of the
Nouveau Luxe; and to see its gestures reflected in a Latin consciousness
was an endless entertainment to Bowen.

The tone of his guest's last words made him take them up. "But is the
lady you allude to more than a hypothesis? Surely you're not thinking of
getting married?"

Chelles raised his eye-brows ironically. "When hasn't one to think of
it, in my situation? One hears of nothing else at home--one knows that,
like death, it has to come." His glance, which was still mustering the
room, came to a sudden pause and kindled.

"Who's the lady over there--fair-haired, in white--the one who's just
come in with the red-faced man? They seem to be with a party of your
compatriots."

Bowen followed his glance to a neighbouring table, where, at the moment,
Undine Marvell was seating herself at Peter Van Degen's side, in the
company of the Harvey Shallums, the beautiful Mrs. Beringer and a dozen
other New York figures.

She was so placed that as she took her seat she recognized Bowen and
sent him a smile across the tables. She was more simply dressed than
usual, and the pink lights, warming her cheeks and striking gleams from
her hair, gave her face a dewy freshness that was new to Bowen. He
had always thought her beauty too obvious, too bathed in the bright
publicity of the American air; but to-night she seemed to have been
brushed by the wing of poetry, and its shadow lingered in her eyes.

Chelles' gaze made it evident that he had received the same impression.

"One is sometimes inclined to deny your compa