the room. Katharine, as she shook hands with him, asked him,
in her own mind, "Now, do you think we're enjoying ourselves
enormously?"... "Mr. Denham, mother," she said aloud, for she saw that
her mother had forgotten his name.

That fact was perceptible to Mr. Denham also, and increased the
awkwardness which inevitably attends the entrance of a stranger into a
room full of people much at their ease, and all launched upon sentences.
At the same time, it seemed to Mr. Denham as if a thousand softly padded
doors had closed between him and the street outside. A fine mist, the
etherealized essence of the fog, hung visibly in the wide and rather
empty space of the drawing-room, all silver where the candles were
grouped on the tea-table, and ruddy again in the firelight. With
the omnibuses and cabs still running in his head, and his body still
tingling with his quick walk along the streets and in and out of traffic
and foot-passengers, this drawing-room seemed very remote and still;
and the faces of the elderly people were mellowed, at some distance from
each other, and had a bloom on them owing to the fact that the air in
the drawing-room was thickened by blue grains of mist. Mr. Denham had
come in as Mr. Fortescue, the eminent novelist, reached the middle of a
very long sentence. He kept this suspended while the newcomer sat down,
and Mrs. Hilbery deftly joined the severed parts by leaning towards him
and remarking:

"Now, what would you do if you were married to an engineer, and had to
live in Manchester, Mr. Denham?"

"Surely she could learn Persian," broke in a thin, elderly gentleman.
"Is there no retired schoolmaster or man of letters in Manchester with
whom she could read Persian?"

"A cousin of ours has married and gone to live in Manchester," Katharine
explained. Mr. Denham muttered something, which was indeed all that
was required of him, and the novelist went on where he had left off.
Privately, Mr. Denham cursed himself very sharply for having exchanged
the freedom of the street for this sophisticated drawing-room, where,
among other disagreeables, he certainly would not appear at his best. He
glanced round him, and saw that, save for Katharine, they were all over
forty, the only consolation being that Mr. Fortescue was a considerable
celebrity, so that to-morrow one might be glad to have met him.

"Have you ever been to Manchester?" he asked Katharine.

"Never," she replied.

"Why do you object to it, th