hat's your reply. It was not
curiosity. I was only showing an amiable interest." His tone conveyed
that he had intended no offense and refused to take any; the
disagreeableness should be all on the same side.

"Thank you for the interest. I am doing much as usual," Gerald answered,
placated.

"Who is this professor from America whom the very select are invited to
meet?" Charlie asked after an interval, as if they had been on the best
of terms again.

The playfulness again was innocent, again might have been regarded as
almost an attempt to flatter; nevertheless it again jarred upon Gerald.
It was by an effort that he answered soberly and literally, without
betraying that the point of irony had irritated him, as, he did not
doubt, it was meant to irritate.

"Another translation of Dante?" Charlie made merry, when Gerald had
finished telling as much as he knew about the professor. "I tell you
what--I will set myself to translating the 'Divine Comedy'! It will give
me distinction, and then--it 's very simple,--I will never show my
translation!"

There was surely no harm in this. It was just stupid. Charlie's
_esprit_ was never of any fineness. He and Gerald had known each
other from the days when both went to M. Demonget's school, whence,
without having been friends, they had emerged intimates. It would have
been ridiculous for either to try to impress the other by the profundity
of his thoughts. Charlie was right in thinking of himself as standing in
a relation to Gerald that made him free to expose ideas in their
undress. And yet it was on this evening and this occasion that Gerald
said to himself for the first time definitely that he did not like
Charlie Hunt. An antipathy existing perhaps from the beginning had risen
to the point where it crossed the threshold of consciousness. No, he
neither liked nor thought well of him.

Luckily, it did not much matter, their relations were superficial.
Belonging in the same circles they must meet from time to time; but if
Gerald avoided him whenever it was decently feasible, he need not often
suffer as at this moment from the repressed nervous need to repudiate in
explicit terms his person, his society, his manners, his morals,
everything that was his. By way of beginning this avoidance, Gerald cast
his eyes more particularly about him in search of a partner. Charlie's
eyes too were wandering over the small and scattered number of ladies
still available to late comers.

B