ome disturbing perfume floated from her.... He moved a
step nearer to her, wondering why Gilbert did not smile at her nor show
any signs of pleasure at meeting her. It seemed to him to be impossible
for any one but the most curmudgeonly of men to behave so ungraciously
to so beautiful a woman, or to resist her radiant smiles. She turned to
him as he moved towards her, and he saw that her eyes were grey. He
heard Gilbert mumbling the introduction.

"So glad!" she said, shaking hands with him. He had expected her to bow
to him, and had not been prepared for the offer of her hand. He inwardly
cursed his clumsiness as he changed his gesture. "I saw you in the Park
with Gilbert this afternoon, didn't I?" she added.

"Yes," he answered, and could say no more. Shyness had fallen on him,
and he stood before her, grinning fatuously, and twisting a button on
his waistcoat, but unable to speak. "Yes," he said, after a while, "I
was with Gilbert in the Park this afternoon!"

"Speak up, you fool!" he was saying to himself. "Here's the loveliest
woman you've ever met waiting for you to speak to her, and all you can
do is to repeat her phrases as if you were a newly-breeched brat aping
its parent. Speak up, you fool!..."

He felt his face turning red and hot. Almost before he knew what he was
saying his tongue began to wag, and he heard himself saying, in a stiff,
stilted voice, "It was very nice in the Park this afternoon!..." _Oh,
banal fool_, he thought, _she will despise you now, as if you were a
great, gawky lout_....

She turned away from him, and spoke to Gilbert. "I've been at Dulbury,"
she said, "for six weeks. That's where I got all this brown!..." She
laughed and pointed to her cheeks. "I'm so glad to get back. The country
bores me stiff. Nothing to see but the scenery. Oh dear!" She almost
yawned at her remembrance of the country. "And things are always biting
me or stinging me. I'm miserable all the time I'm there!"

"Then why do you go?" said Gilbert.

"Jimphy wanted to go. Jimphy thinks it's his duty to show himself to the
tenants now and again. It's the only return he can make, poor dear, for
all that rent they pay!"

Gilbert said "Hm!" and then turned to go to the stalls. "It's Jimphy's
birthday to-day," she said, and he turned to her again. "That's why
we're here to-night. Together, I mean. He's treating me to a box. Come
round and talk to us, Gilbert, after the first act ... and you, too,
Mr.... Mr!..."