comfortable or
very profitable. He did not want to think; he wanted the hours to pass
as quickly and unreflectingly as possible until it was morning again. No
doubt then things would present themselves in a more normal light.
Certainly the events of the day had proved rather exciting and
unsettling, or, to be perfectly honest, Jeannie had somehow unsettled
him. How quickly their friendship had sprung up! And what had happened
then? She seemed to have left him altogether, glided away from him.

He strolled back into the billiard-room, where he would find company of
some sort, but there already the hour of yawns and fitful conversation
had begun, and first one and then another man nodded good-night and left
the room. Jim Crowfoot, however, who hated going to bed as much as he
disliked getting up, had a brilliant cargo of conversation on board,
which he proceeded to unload. The two knew each other well, and when
they were left alone conversation rapidly became intimate.

"Thunderstorms always are simultaneous with sombreness," he said, "and I
sometimes wonder whether it is our sombreness that produces the storm or
the storm that produces sombreness. Every one has been sombre to-day,
except, perhaps, you, Tom, and the merry widow."

"Are you referring to Mrs. Halton?"

"I don't know of any other. Lady Nottingham isn't merry. I can't think
how you manage to produce so much impression with so little material. I
have to talk all the time to produce an impression at all, and then it
is usually an unfortunate one."

"I think your description of Mrs. Halton as the merry widow is a
particularly unfortunate one," remarked Lindfield.

"You guessed whom I meant," said Jim.

"I know. It was characteristic of you if not of her. You always see
people in--in caricature. Besides, I thought Mrs. Halton was anything
but merry."

"You should know best."

"Why?"

"Because you have spent the entire day with her, chiefly _tete-a-tete_.
Also yesterday."

Tom Lindfield was apparently not in a very genial frame of mind
to-night. He let this remark pass in silence, and then went back to
what Jim had previously said.

"You always talk a good lot of rot, old chap," he said, "and I want to
know if you were talking rot when you said something about my producing
an impression with little material. It sounds pretty good rot, but if
you meant something by it, I wish you would tell me what it was. Does it
have any special application?"