I think he’s the most impressive mortal I have ever met. Bored stiff with women—as stony-hearted as you, Ned. He’s a sort of ascetic, vowed to a cause.”

“His own career?” I asked.

“No. No. He’s not a bit of an egotist. There’s a pent-up force that’s got to come out. He’s a fanatic about some new kind of Empire development, and I know people who think him a second Rhodes. I want you to make friends with him and tell me what you think, for in your fishlike way you have good judgement.”

Sally yawned again, and I respected more than ever the courage of women who can go on till they drop and keep smiling. She turned away in response to a question of Mayot’s, and I exchanged banalities with the lady on my other side. Presently I found myself free again to look round the table. I was right: we were the oddest mixture of the fresh and the blasé, the carefree and the careworn. To look at Tavanger’s hollow eyes and hear in one’s ear the babble of high young voices made a contrast which was almost indecent . . . I had a feeling as if we were all on a vast, comfortable raft in some unknown sea, and that, while some were dancing to jazz music, others were crowding silently at the edge, staring into the brume ahead. Staring anxiously, too, for in that mist there might be fearful as well as wonderful things . . . I found myself studying George Lamington’s face, and felt a childish dislike of him. His life was so padded and cosseted and bovine. He had just inherited another quarter of a million from an uncle, and he had not the imagination of a rabbit in the use of money. Why does wealth make dull people so much duller? I had always rather liked George, but now I felt him intolerable. I must have been very tired, for I was getting as full of silly prejudices as a minor poet.

Sally was speaking again, as she collected eyes.

“Don’t be afraid. This is going to be a very peaceful party.”

“Will you promise me,” I said, “that I won’t come down tomorrow and find half a dozen new faces at breakfast?”

“Honest Injun,” she replied. “They are all here except one, and he arrives tonight.”

When the women had gone Evelyn Flambard brought his port to my side. Having exhausted horses during dinner, he regaled me with the Englishman’s other main topic, politics. Evelyn despaired of the republic. He had grievances against the budget, the new rating law, and the government’s agricultural policy. He was alarmed about the condition of India, where he had served in his old Hussar days, and about Egypt, where he had large investments. His views on America were calculated to make a serious breach between the two sections of the Anglo-Saxon race.