The party was the sort that Severn loved most of all--a gathering of a dozen or so "big names" from various spheres of activity, with himself as the lowest common denominator--or would it be the highest common factor? ... A sort of social cocktail, to vary the metaphor; and in this particular concoction the preponderating flavour was naturally that of science, pure and applied. It was a distinguished crowd--terrifyingly distinguished. Besides Helen, there were only two women--Doctor Isidora Hadden (who lectured on anatomy and wrote about six-legged dogs in the scientific journals), and Lady Muriel Spencer, whom Severn had asked, presumably, because of her recent explorations amongst the buried cities of Honduras. Of the men, about three-quarters were sixty; two-thirds wore evening-dress of Victorian design; a half were bearded; and at least a quarter were varyingly deaf. No doubt their combined titles, qualifications, degrees, diplomas, and so on, would have filled a quarter-column of the _Times_. Severn, behind his perfect exterior of charm, was in a sardonic mood, for as he passed me in the drawing-room before dinner, he whispered into my ear: "Beware! Here are lions!" Terry, perhaps, was impressed. He was also very nervous. He was given a place of honour between Karelsky and Lady Muriel (Severn _would_ do things like that), and most of the others were probably wondering who he was and why the devil he wasn't somewhere else. Particularly as he didn't seem able or willing to make the slightest use of his opportunities. Karelsky hardly spoke to him at all, and Lady Muriel tried him once about Aztecs and then gave him up. As for Karelsky, he was an enigma, and not perhaps wholly a pleasant one. He couldn't help perspiring, I admit; but he needn't have mopped his forehead continually with his table-napkin. He talked most of all to Severn, who was always ready to translate a difficult phrase into German for his comprehension; but occasionally, and with completely bad manners, he shouted across the table in response to some remark, not addressed to him, that he chanced to have overheard. "Dat iss one goot price," he bellowed at a couple of aged professors who were discussing confidentially the amount of money they had made out of certain text-books. But it wasn't hard to believe that he was clever, and he certainly showed signs of being well-informed about other matters besides science. "I haf heard of Hampstead before," he said once. "It iss where--iss it not?--you haf your 'Arry and your 'Arriet on the holiday of the banks." That, I thought, was not bad for a Russian-born Austrian.