The Complete Man also sat down. “So to adore at first sight,” he asked, “is not of the l—least importance?” She shook her head, smiled, raised and lowered her eyelids. One was so well accustomed to this sort of thing; it had no importance. “Sugar?” she asked. The young poet was safely there, sparkling across the tea-table. He offered love and she, with the easy heartlessness of one who is so well accustomed to this sort of thing, offered him sugar. He nodded. “Please. But if it’s of no importance to you,” he went on, “then I’ll go away at once.” The lady laughed her section of a descending chromatic scale. “Oh no, you won’t,” she said. “You can’t.” And she felt that the _grande dame_ had made a very fine stroke. “Quite right,” the Complete Man replied; “I couldn’t.” He stirred his tea. “But who are you,” he looked up at her suddenly, “you devilish female?” He was genuinely anxious to know; and besides, he was paying her a very pretty compliment. “What do you do with your dangerous existence?” “I enjoy life,” she said. “I think one ought to enjoy life. Don’t you? I think it’s one’s first duty.” She became quite grave. “One ought to enjoy every moment of it,” she said. “Oh, passionately, adventurously, newly, excitingly, uniquely.” The Complete Man laughed. “A conscientious hedonist. I see.” She felt uncomfortably that the fastidious lady had not quite lived up to her character. She had spoken more like a young woman who finds life too dull and daily, and would like to get on to the cinema. “I am very conscientious,” she said, making significant play with the magnolia petals and smiling her riddling smile. She must retrieve the Great Catherine’s reputation. “I could see that from the first,” mocked the Complete Man with a triumphant insolence. “Conscience doth make cowards of us all.” The fastidious lady only contemptuously smiled. “Have a little chocolate cake,” she suggested. Her heart was beating. She wondered, she wondered. There was a long silence. Gumbril finished his chocolate cake, gloomily drank his tea and did not speak. He found, all at once, that he had nothing to say. His jovial confidence seemed, for the moment, to have deserted him. He was only the Mild and Melancholy one foolishly disguised as a Complete Man; a sheep in beaver’s clothing. He entrenched himself behind his formidable silence and waited; waited, at first, sitting in his chair, then, when this total inactivity became unbearable, striding about the room.