"Oh," said Miss Babs vaguely, "subconscious influences, and soul-harmonies, and things like that. We divide men and women into various classes. Men like you are Cave Men. Most of the Cave Men I know are soldiers. Then there are Soul Men--actors, and musicians. Then creatures who do nothing but crawl about in beautiful clothes are Thing Men. Men with shiny faces and hot hands are Butter Men. We divide women differently. Most of them are Impossibles, but there are a good many All-Buts. Life is so varied. The human soul, with all its infinite shades of colour--" Philip, quite intoxicated by the exotic atmosphere in which he found himself, bit heavily and incautiously into the roll of pastry. Straightway from either end there sprang a long and sinuous jet of clotted cream. The rearmost section shot violently down his own throat, nearly choking him; that in front descended upon the inlaid parquet floor in a tubular cascade, where it formed an untidy and conspicuous ant-hill. In a moment one of Miss Duncombe's daintily-shod feet slid forward, her skimpy skirt forming a promontory which effectually hid the disaster from the eyes of others--especially Lady Rendle. "Mop it up quickly," she said in an excited whisper. "Take your handkerchief--anything! No one will see." She spoke breathlessly, with all the zeal of a faithful sister screening a delinquent small brother from the wrath to come. Philip, as he bent confusedly down to clear up the mess, recognised with genuine pleasure that for all her soulfulness and pose Miss Babs Duncombe was nothing more, after all, than a jolly little schoolgirl suffering from a bad attack of adolescence. "That was the sweetest thing that ever happened," said Babs, after all traces of havoc had been obliterated. "If you could have _seen_ yourself when the cream squirted out of the end! I must tell the Idealists about it at the next _séance_. Now, I must not laugh any more, or I shall get a purple face. Tell me, is my nose shiny?" She submitted her peach-like countenance to Philip's embarrassed inspection. "It looks all right," he said. "I don't believe you," said Miss Duncombe, and extracted a small mirror from a gold bag. She viewed herself with a gasp of dismay. "How can you say such a thing?" she exclaimed indignantly. Swiftly she produced a powder-puff, and proceeded to repair the ravages caused by excessive mirth in a warm room. The unsophisticated Philip gazed at her, speechless, and was still gazing when he was whirled away by his indefatigable hostess--Lady Rendle believed in keeping her male callers circulating: it enabled those whose conversational stock-in-trade was scanty to indulge in the luxury of repetition--to the side of one Sheila Garvey. Miss Garvey began at once:-- "Do you play cricket at all?" "No, not now," said Philip; "but I play--" Apparently Miss Garvey had no desire to discuss other pastimes. "Still, you go to Lords occasionally, I suppose," she suggested.