She had not heard what the duchess--a very disagreeable duchess who sat on a sofa and appeared savagely careworn--had been saying, so that she had inclined herself, in the courtly manner that at school she had been taught to reserve for the French legitimist nobility, but that she thought she might expend upon a rather state function even for the Bonapartists, and had replied that without the least doubt the duchess had the right of the matter. . . . The marquis had given her from dark eyes one long glance, and she had returned it with a long cold glance that certainly told him she was meat for his masters. It extinguished him. . . . Tietjens had staged his meeting with herself remarkably well. It was the sort of lymphatic thing he _could_ do, so that, for the fifth of a minute, she wondered if he had any feelings or emotions at all. But she knew that he had. . . . The general, at any rate, bearing down upon them with satisfaction, had remarked: "Ah, I see you've seen each other before to-day. . . . I thought perhaps you wouldn't have found time before, Tietjens. . . . Your draft must be a great nuisance. . . ." Tietjens said without expression: "Yes, we have seen each other before. . . . I made time to call at Sylvia's hotel, sir." It was at Tietjens' terrifying expressionlessness, at that completely being up to a situation, that the first wave of emotion had come over her. . . . For, till that very moment, she had been merely sardonically making the constatation that there was not a single presentable man in the room. . . . There was not even one that you could call a gentleman . . . for you cannot size up the French . . . ever! . . . But, suddenly, she was despairing! . . . How, she said to herself, could she ever move, put emotion into, this lump! It was like trying to move an immense mattress filled with feathers. You pulled at one end, but the whole mass sagged down and remained immobile until you seemed to have no strength at all. . . . Until virtue went out from you. . . . It was as if he had the evil eye: or some special protector. He was so appallingly competent, so appallingly always in the centre of his own picture: The general said, rather joyfully: "Then you can spare a minute, Tietjens, to talk to the duchess! About coal! . . . For goodness' sake, man, save the situation! I'm worn out. . . ." Sylvia bit the inside of her lower lip--she never bit her lip itself!--to keep herself from exclaiming aloud. It was just exactly what should not happen to Tietjens at that juncture. . . . She heard the general explaining to her in his courtly manner, that the duchess was holding up the whole ceremony because of the price of coal. The general loved her desperately. Her, Sylvia! In quite a proper manner for an elderly general. . . . But he would go to no small extremes in her interests! So would his sister! She looked hard at the room to get her senses into order again. She said: "It's like a Hogarth picture. . . ."