don't regret going?"

"Very few plays are as amusing as the audience," she answered
thoughtfully. "Oh, I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I wondered
what you were like. . . ." She turned to look at him with leisurely and
unsmiling interest. "I expected to find you much younger. How old are
you? Twenty-six? _Thirty-two!_ You're ten years older than I am! What in
the world have you been doing with yourself?"

"That would take _rather_ a long time to tell!" he laughed.

"I don't expect it would. Life is not measured by days, but by
sensations. . . ."

"Those you experience or those you create?" Eric interrupted.

Barbara turned away and nodded to herself.

"It's like that, is it?" she murmured. "Are you declaring war? If so,
you're clever enough to fight with your own weapons instead of picking
up the rusty swords of men I've already beaten. You knew little Val
Arden, of course? And my cousin Jim Loring? _They_ taught you to call me
a 'sensationalist.' Labels are an indolent man's device for guessing
what's inside a bottle without tasting."

"They sometimes prevent accidental poisoning."

"If the right labels are on the right bottles. That's what I have to
find out. And it's worth an occasional risk. . . . Sensationalist! I
collect new emotions, but you must be _bourgeois_ yourself if you want
to _epater le bourgeois_. Now, _you_ can't have had many emotions, or
you wouldn't have written that play. And yet--what were you doing
before?" she demanded abruptly.

"I followed the despised calling of a journalist."

"Ah!"

She nodded and began eating her quail without explaining herself
further. Eric was nettled by her tone, for she was taking pains to let
him see that she had not liked his play, perhaps even that she despised
him for writing it. He half turned to Lady Poynter, but she was deep in
conversation with her nephew. For a time he, too, concentrated his
attention on the quail; but every one else was talking, and, though
Barbara's challenge was too pert to be taken seriously, he felt that
half-praise from her was more valuable than the adulation of women like
Mrs. Shelley who were content to worship success for its own sake.

"What was the precise meaning of the 'Ah!'?" he enquired lazily.

"'Meaning'; not 'precise meaning.' You surely don't want me to see that
you're rather losing your temper and trying to cover it up by being
dignified. You've been so careful with your effects, too! . . . I said