For a moment he hated her, with her smooth politeness, after a night when she had been unbearable and human by turns. He hated her bedraggled hair and tired face. Then he could have wept, so deeply did he desire to pull her head down on his shoulder and smooth the wrinkles of weariness out of her dear face, the dearer because they had endured the weariness together. But he said, “Well, let’s try to get some breakfast first, Istra.” With their garments wrinkled from rain, half asleep and rather cross, they arrived at the esthetic but respectable colony of Aengusmere by the noon train. CHAPTER XI HE BUYS AN ORANGE TIE The Aengusmere Caravanserai is so unyieldingly cheerful and artistic that it makes the ordinary person long for a dingy old-fashioned room in which he can play solitaire and chew gum without being rebuked with exasperating patience by the wall stencils and clever etchings and polished brasses. It is adjectiferous. The common room (which is uncommon for hotel parlor) is all in superlatives and chintzes. Istra had gone up to her room to sleep, bidding Mr. Wrenn do likewise and avoid the wrong bunch at the Caravanserai; for besides the wrong bunch of Interesting People there were, she explained, a right bunch, of working artists. But he wanted to get some new clothes, to replace his rain-wrinkled ready-mades. He was tottering through the common room, wondering whether he could find a clothing-shop in Aengusmere, when a shrill gurgle from a wing-chair by the rough-brick fireplace halted him. “Oh-h-h-h, _Mister_ Wrenn; Mr. _Wrenn!_” There sat Mrs. Stettinius, the poet-lady of Olympia’s rooms on Great James Street. “Oh-h-h-h, Mr. Wrenn, you _bad_ man, _do_ come sit down and tell me all _about_ your _wonderful_ trek with Istra Nash. I _just_ met _dear_ Istra in the upper hall. Poor dear, she was _so_ crumpled, but her hair was like a sunset over mountain peaks—you know, as Yeats says: “A stormy sunset were her lips, A stormy sunset on doomed ships, only of course this was her _hair_ and not her _lips_—and she told me that you had tramped all the _way_ from London. I’ve never heard of anything so romantic—or no, I won’t say ‘romantic’—I _do_ agree with dear Olympia—_isn’t_ she a mag_nifi_cent woman—_so_ fearless and progressive—didn’t you _adore_ meeting her?—she is our modern Joan of Arc—such a _noble_ figure—I _do_ agree with her that _romantic_ love is _passé_, that we have entered the era of glorious companionship that regards varietism as _exactly_ as romantic as monogamy. But—but—where was I?—I think your gipsying down from London was _most_ exciting. Now _do_ tell us all about it, Mr. Wrenn. First, I want you to meet Miss Saxonby and Mr. Gutch and _dear_ Yilyena Dourschetsky and Mr. Howard Bancock Binch—of course you know his poetry.” And then she drew a breath and flopped back into the wing-chair’s muffling depths.