so like a woman to go off at a tangent like
that), "you've got Richard."

"Richard," she twinkled, "is not like you. He loves my books."

"He ought to know better," George asserted severely, and at that moment
in he came.

"George!" Richard was jubilant. "Have you heard the news?"

"What news?" George was thinking of the Carpentier-Lewis fight due that
night.

"June has been awarded the Nobel prize."

"How splendid!" George looked a little puzzled. "Is it for life saving?"

"Yes," June put in quickly.

"I'm not at all surprised." George beamed at her. "You always were as
plucky as they made 'em and gifted. Do you remember how charmingly you
used to sing? 'Not a big voice, but so true,' Mother used to say, and
she's a great judge."

"Your mother has always been so sweet to me."

"What a talented woman like you wants to write for beats me."

George had got back to his grievance again, but she lured him on to the
subject of irises on which they were both experts, and it was not till
just before dinner that he hurried away.

Then suddenly he remembered that he hadn't asked her whose life she had
saved. How silly and how selfish! It was so like her not to talk about
herself, and then he saw on a patch of posters: "June Rivers awarded the
Nobel prize," and though he was very late he stopped to buy an evening
paper.

XI

COUNTERPOINT

[_To THE MARCHESE GIOVANNI VISCONTI VENOSTA_]

Matthew half shut his eyes--as he always did when he particularly wanted
to see.

"For the first time in my life," he said, "I regret my myopia.
Confronted with this room, imagination pales before sight."

Virginia looked round--at the strawberry ice brocade, at the gilt, at
the Bouchers--so painstaking and so painful--at the palms that seemed to
conceal manicurists and barbers.

"Look," he continued, "at our hostess. I am sure her ears and her nose
take off at night. Her hair is a libel on horsehair and dye."

"Oh,"--Virginia's smile was playing like a light over his face--"think
of the days when her eyes were like stars and her ears like shells and
her hair was curling all over the place."

"Virginia," his voice was tender, "where you are there are no more
palms, wigs turn into hair, rouge into blushes----"

"Matthew," she said, "you are a romantic and I am the only person in the
world who knows it."

"You are the only person in the world with whom I am in love."

"For the moment."

"How practical you are!