ou know him. What a wonderful
man! The only really cosmopolitan artist in England, I say, now
Beardsley's dead. I've got a Siegfried drawing by Beardsley. He was a
great friend of mine. I adored him."

"This is a fine thing," said George, touching a bronze of a young girl
on the same table as the books.

"You think so?" Miss Wheeler responded uncertainly. "I suppose it _is_.
It's a Gilbert. He gave it me. But do you really think it compares with
this Barye? It doesn't, does it?" She directed him to another bronze of
a crouching cheetah.

So she moved him about. He was dazed. His modest supply of adjectives
proved inadequate. When she paused, he murmured:

"It's a great room you've managed to get here."

"Ah!" she cried thinly. "But you've no idea of the trouble I've had over
this room. Do you know it's really two rooms. I had to take two flats in
order to fix this room."

She was launched on a supreme topic, and George heard a full history.
She would not have a house. She would have a flat. She instructed
house-agents to find for her the best flat in London. There was no best
flat in London. London landlords did not understand flats, which were
comprehended only in Paris. The least imperfect flats in London were two
on a floor, and as their drawing-rooms happened to be contiguous on
their longer sides, she had the idea of leasing two intolerable flats so
as to obtain one flat that was tolerable. She had had terrible
difficulties about the central heating. No flats in London were
centrally heated except in the corridors and on the staircases. However,
she had imposed her will on the landlord, and radiators had appeared in
every room. George had a vision of excessive wealth subjugating the
greatest artists and riding with implacable egotism over the customs and
institutions of a city obstinately conservative. The cost and the
complexity of Irene Wheeler's existence amazed and intimidated
George--for this double flat was only one of her residences. He wondered
what his parents would say if they could see him casually treading the
oak parquetry and the heavy rugs of the resplendent abode. And then he
thought, the humble and suspicious upstart: "There must be something
funny about her, or she wouldn't be asking _me_ here!"

They went in to dinner, without ceremony. George was last, the hostess
close to his side.

"Who's the Frenchman?" he inquired casually, with the sudden boldness
that often breaks out of timidity