"Why, Jane, I often wonder why on earth I do it. Doesn't it seem the height of absurdity to collect a lot of indifferent people, a regular zoo, in a room and pour a little tea down their throats and tell them: Now, have a good time?" "But one must have some sort of society ... And you know perfectly well you are just fishing, Nancibel. Why, the cleverest people in Boston come to your teas, and as for celebrities!" "Mr. Preston, won't you let me give you a little more tea? Yours looks cold and horrid...." "... No, I wouldn't call 'The Way of All Flesh' a great novel.'" "But, really, I'd like to know what is great then." "A great satire, but not a great novel. . . . It's too embittered, not Olympian and balanced enough to be truly great." "But as a philosopher ..." "Ah, as a philosopher ..." Through rigid glassy layers Wenny watched the nodding of heads, lifting of teacups, setting down of plates, brushing of fingertips. Occasionally he saw himself going through wooden gestures of politeness, heard himself speak. At last they had all gone; he was alone with Nan in the room that smelt of tea and scalded lemon and cake. Outside the windows the ruddy mist was purpling to twilight. "O, Wenny, why on earth do I do it?" "I guess because you like it, Nan." "Probably you're right." She laughed happily. "I'd never thought of that before.... No, I hate it, and all those people. Imagine what Fitzie told me today. She said you always turned up as a sign that tea was over and it was time to wait not on the order of her going but go at once... Isn't she a fool? Then she added that it was rumored round Jordan that my engagement to Fanshaw would be announced any day... O, Wenny, people are a scream!" "I probably do look rather grouchy when I come here and find a lot of those young hens cackling about your technique and that wretched old cadenza hound ..." "It's pretty ridiculous, Wenny, that two people who know each other as well as we do can't talk...." Nan interrupted suddenly, speaking slowly, choosing her words: "Can't talk about our ... can't explain ourselves. O, I wonder if we'll ever know each other." "Perhaps the fact that we need to explain ourselves ..." "You mean it proves that we can't?" Wenny nodded. "Or perhaps it's just cowardice," he went on after a long pause, feeling everything within the cold bars of his ribs throb sickeningly. "Almost everything is that." "Why can't we be sensible?" "It's not sensible, it's alive I'd want to be ... But this is repeating," he said harshly with trembling lips, straightening himself up. It was as if a rind had burst in him letting out warm, sweetish floods; as if he were crying beside a grave where she had lain dead for years and lifetimes, his memory full of an ivory body he had loved. They were silent, not looking at each other. There was a knock at the door. Nan drew her breath in sharply and went to open. Wenny heard Fanshaw's voice in the hall.