Bertram Fraser's turn came and he rose to it with his usual buoyancy. He was interested in meeting Madame von Marwitz; but he was a young man who had made his way in the world and perhaps exaggerated his achievement. He expected people to be interested also in meeting him. He expected from the great genius a reciprocal buoyancy. Madame von Marwitz bent her brows upon him. Irony grew in her smile, a staccato crispness in her utterance. Cool and competent as he was, Bertram presently looked disconcerted; he did not easily forgive those who disconcerted him, and, making no further effort to carry on the conversation, he sat silent, smiling a little, and waited for his partner to turn to him again. Had Gregory not taken up his talk, lamely and coldly, with Madame von Marwitz, she would have been left in an awkward isolation. She answered him now in a voice of lassitude and melancholy. Leaning back in her chair, strange and almost stupefying object that she was, her eyes moved slowly round the table with a wintry desolation of glance, until, meeting Karen's eyes, they beamed forth a brave warmth of cherishing, encouraging sweetness. "Yes, _ma chérie_," they seemed to say; "Bear up, I am bearing up. I will make _méringues_ of them for you." She could make _méringues_ of them; Gregory didn't doubt it. Yet, and here was the glow of malicious satisfaction that atoned to him for the discomforts he endured, they were, every one of them, making _méringues_ of her. In their narrowness, in their defects, ran an instinct, as shrewd as it was unconscious, that was a match for Madame von Marwitz's intelligence. They were so unperceiving that no one of them, except perhaps Betty and Karen--who of course didn't count among them at all--was aware of the wintry wind of Madame von Marwitz's boredom; yet if it had been recognised it would have been felt as insignificant. They knew that she was a genius, and that she was very odd looking and that, as Mrs. Jardine's guardian, she had not come in a professional capacity and might therefore not play to them after dinner. So defined, she was seen, with all her splendour of association, as incidental. Only perhaps in this particular section of the British people could this particular effect of cheerful imperviousness have been achieved. They were not of the voracious, cultured hordes who make their way by their well-trained appreciations, nor of the fashionable lion-collecting tribe who do not need to make their way but who need to have their way made amusing. Well-bred, securely stationed, untouched by boredom or anxiety, they were at once too dull and too intelligent to be fluttered by the presence of a celebrity. They wanted nothing of her, except, perhaps, that after their coffee she should give them some music, and they did not want this at all eagerly.