With his abashed English hostess he carried on a strange conversation full of indirect references to the “stately edifice in the Rue de Rennes.” He had spoken of it to Bertha: “That stately edifice in the Rue de Rennes—but of course you don’t know it!” With smiling German ceremoniousness, with ingenious circumlocutions, he bent down to his hostess’s nervously smiling face and poured into her startled ear symbols and images of pawnshops, usury, three gold balls, “pious mountains,” “smokkin” or “frac” suits, etc., which he seemed a little to confuse, overwhelmed her with a serious terminology, all in a dialect calculated to bewilder the most acute philologist. “Yes, it _is_ interesting,” she said with strained conviction. “Isn’t it?” Kreisler replied. It was a comparative estimate of the facilities for the disposing of a watch in Germany and France. “I’m going to introduce you, Herr Kreisler, to a friend of mine—Mrs. Bevelage.” She wanted to give the German guests a particularly cordial reception. Kreisler did not seem, superficially, a great acquisition to any club, but he was with the others. As a means of concluding this very painful interview—he was getting nearer every minute to the word that he yet solemnly forbade himself the use of—she led him to a self-controlled remnant of beautiful womanhood who had a reputation with her for worldliness. Mrs. Bevelage could listen to all this, and would be able to cope with a certain disquieting element she recognized in the German. He saw the reason of this measure; and, looking with ostentatious regret at a long-legged flapper seated next door, cast a reproachful glance at his hostess. Left alone with the widow, he surveyed her ample and worldly form. “Get thee to a nunnery!” he said dejectedly. “I beg your pardon?” “Yes. You have omitted ‘my lord.’” Mrs. Bevelage looked pleased and puzzled. Possibly he was a count or baron. “Do you know that stingy but magnificent edifice⸺” “Yes⸺?” “That handsome home of precarious ‘fracs’ in the Rue de Rennes⸺?” “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand—” The widow had not got used to his composite tongue. She liked Kreisler, however. “Shall we dance?” he said, getting up quickly. He clasped her firmly in the small of the back and they got ponderously in motion, he stamping a little bit, as though he mistook the waltz for a more primitive music. He took her twice, with ever-increasing velocity, round the large hall, and at the third round, at breakneck speed, spun with her in the direction of the front door.