e pace, packs into
one scene the stuff of a dozen. The chance meeting of Amherst and
Justine, seemingly of no significance to either, contained the germ of
developments of which both had begun to be aware before the evening was
over. Their short talk--the first really intimate exchange of words
between them--had the effect of creating a sense of solidarity that grew
apace in the atmosphere of the Lynbrook dinner-table.

Justine was always reluctant to take part in Bessy's week-end dinners,
but as she descended the stairs that evening she did not regret having
promised to be present. She frankly wanted to see Amherst again--his
tone, his view of life, reinforced her own convictions, restored her
faith in the reality and importance of all that Lynbrook ignored and
excluded. Her extreme sensitiveness to surrounding vibrations of thought
and feeling told her, as she glanced at him between the flowers and
candles of the long dinner-table, that he too was obscurely aware of the
same effect; and it flashed across her that they were unconsciously
drawn together by the fact that they were the only two strangers in the
room. Every one else had the same standpoint, spoke the same language,
drew on the same stock of allusions, used the same weights and measures
in estimating persons and actions. Between Mr. Langhope's indolent
acuteness of mind and the rudimentary processes of the rosy Telfers
there was a difference of degree but not of kind. If Mr. Langhope viewed
the spectacle more objectively, it was not because he had outlived the
sense of its importance, but because years of experience had
familiarized him with its minutest details; and this familiarity with
the world he lived in had bred a profound contempt for any other.

In no way could the points of contact between Amherst and Justine Brent
have been more vividly brought out than by their tacit exclusion from
the currents of opinion about them. Amherst, seated in unsmiling
endurance at the foot of the table, between Mrs. Ansell, with her
carefully-distributed affabilities, and Blanche Carbury, with her
reckless hurling of conversational pebbles, seemed to Justine as much of
a stranger as herself among the people to whom his marriage had
introduced him. So strongly did she feel the sense of their common
isolation that it was no surprise to her, when the men reappeared in the
drawing-room after dinner, to have her host thread his way, between the
unfolding bridge-tables, st