“This is the kind of table _everybody_ ought to have,” he observed to the party in general, as he finished his first glass of champagne. “I'm going to have it like this at my place in the States--if I ever decide to go back. I'll have six separate candlesticks like this, not a candelabrum, and that will be the only light in the room. And I'll never have anything but orchids on my table--” “For my part,” Lady Mount-Rhyswicke interrupted in the loud, tired monotone which seemed to be her only manner of speaking, “I like more light. I like all the light that's goin'.” “If Lady Mount-Rhyswicke sat at _my_ table,” returned Mellin dashingly, “I should wish all the light in the world to shine upon so happy an event.” “Hear the man!” she drawled. “He's proposing to me. Thinks I'm a widow.” There was a chorus of laughter, over which rose the bellow of Mr. Pedlow. “'He's game!' she says--and _ain't_ he?” Across the table Madame de Vaurigard's eyes met Mellin's with a mocking intelligence so complete that he caught her message without need of the words she noiselessly formed with her lips: “I tol' you you would be making love to her!” He laughed joyously in answer. Why shouldn't he flirt with Lady Mount-Rhyswicke? He was thoroughly happy; his Helene, his _belle Marquise_, sat across the table from him sending messages to him with her eyes. He adored her, but he liked Lady Mount-Rhyswicke--he liked everybody and everything in the world. He liked Pedlow particularly, and it no longer troubled him that the fat man should be a friend of Madame de Vaurigard. Pedlow was a “character” and a wit as well. Mellin laughed heartily at everything the Honorable Chandler Pedlow said. “This is life,” remarked the young man to his fair neighbor. “What is? Sittin' round a table, eatin' and drinkin'?” “Ah, lovely skeptic!” She looked at him strangely, but he continued with growing enthusiasm: “I mean to sit at such a table as this, with such a chef, with such wines--to know one crowded hour like this is to live! Not a thing is missing; all this swagger furniture, the rich atmosphere of smartness about the whole place; best of all, the company. It's a great thing to have the _real_ people around you, the right sort, you know, socially; people you'd ask to your own table at home. There are only seven, but every one _distingue_, every one--” She leaned both elbows on the table with her hands palm to palm, and, resting her cheek against the back of her left hand, looked at him steadily. “And you--are you distinguished, too?” “Oh, I wouldn't be much known over _here_,” he said modestly. “Do you write poetry?” “Oh, not professionally, though it is published. I suppose”--he sipped his champagne with his head a little to one side as though judging its quality--“I suppose I 've been more or less a dilettante. I've knocked about the world a good bit.” “Helene says you're one of these leisure American billionaires like Mr. Cooley there,” she said in her tired voice.