Mr. Horsley, however, accomplished his duty of leading away this lady with such firmness that Mrs. Wannop conceived of him as a very disagreeable and awkward person. Mr. Horsley's seat was next to Miss Fox, a grey spinster, who sat, as it were, within the fortification of silver urns and deftly occupied herself with the ivory taps of these machines. This seat, too, Mrs. Wannop tried to occupy, imagining that, by moving the silver vases that upheld the tall delphiniums, she would be able to get a diagonal view of Macmaster and so to shout to him. She found, however, that she couldn't, and so resigned herself to taking the chair that had been reserved for Miss Gertie Wilson, who was to have been the eighth guest. Once there she sat in distracted gloom, occasionally saying to her daughter: "I think it's very bad management. I think this party's very badly arranged." Mr. Horsley she hardly thanked for the sole that he placed before her; Tietjens she did not even look at. Sitting beside Macmaster, her eyes fixed on a small door in the corner of a panelled wall, Mrs. Duchemin became a prey to a sudden and overwhelming fit of apprehension. It forced her to say to her guest, though she had resolved to chance it and say nothing: "It wasn't perhaps fair to ask you to come all this way. You may get nothing out of my husband. He's apt . . . especially on Saturdays. . . ." She trailed off into indecision. It was possible that nothing might occur. On two Saturdays out of seven nothing _did_ occur. Then an admission would be wasted; this sympathetic being would go out of her life with a knowledge that he needn't have had--to be a slur on her memory in his mind. . . . But then, overwhelmingly, there came over her the feeling that, if he knew of her sufferings, he might feel impelled to remain and comfort her. She cast about for words with which to finish her sentence. But Macmaster said: "Oh, dear lady!" (And it seemed to her to be charming to be addressed thus!) "One understands . . . One is surely trained and adapted to understand . . . that these great scholars, these abstracted cognoscenti . . ." Mrs. Duchemin breathed a great "Ah!" of relief. Macmaster had used the exactly right words. "And," Macmaster was going on, "merely to spend a short hour; a swallow flight . . . 'As when the swallow gliding from lofty portal to lofty portal' . . . You know the lines . . . in these, your perfect surroundings . . ." Blissful waves seemed to pass from him to her. It was in this way that men should speak; in that way--steel-blue tie, true-looking gold ring, steel-blue eyes beneath black brows!--that men should look. She was half-conscious of warmth; this suggested the bliss of falling asleep, truly, in perfect surroundings. The roses on the table were lovely; their scent came to her. A voice came to her: "You _do_ do the thing in style, I must say."