She was so dainty and sweet, so brilliant a little human humming-bird, that the laughing, chattering, feasting crowd of smartly or extravagantly dressed people gathered about the other trellis-screened tables under Nadier’s rose-pergola sent many a curious or admiring glance her way. And Franky was very proud of his young wife, and theirs had been undeniably a love-match; yet in spite of the good dishes and the excellent Château Yquem, little shivers of chilly premonition rippled over him from time to time. He had got to speak out—definitely decline, in the interests of Posterity, to permit interference on the part of Margot’s Club circle in his private domestic affairs.... How to do it effectively yet inoffensively was a problem that strained his brain-capacity. Yet—again in the interests of Posterity—Franky had never previously interested himself in Posterity—the thing had to be done. He refused Roquefort, buttered a tiny biscuit absently, put it down undecidedly, and as the waiter whisked his plate away—conjured crystal bowls of tepid rose-water and other essentials from space, and vanished in search of dessert—he spoke, assuming for the first time in his five months’ experience of connubial life the toga of marital authority. "I think, do you know, Kittums"—Kittums was Margot’s pet name—"that it will be best to face the music!" "_Connu!_" Margot shrugged a little, widely opening her splendid brown eyes, "But what music?" "The"—Franky took the plunge—"the cradle-music, if you will have it!" Margot’s gasp of dismay, and the indignant fire of a stare that was quenched in brine, awakened Franky to the fact of his having failed in tactics. The return of the waiter with a pyramid of superb strawberries and a musk-melon on cracked ice alone stemmed the outburst of the pent-up flood of reproach. Entrenched behind the melon, Franky waited. The waiter again effaced himself, and Margot said from behind another handkerchief: "Oh, how _could_ you! ... I never _dreamed_ that I should _live_ to hear you speak to me in that way." Over the melon, whose rough green quartered rind had delicate white raised traceries all over it, suggesting outline maps of countries in Fairyland, Franky curiously regarded his wife. He said: "Why are you and all your friends so funky of—what’s only a natural phe—what do you call it? ... What do men and women marry for, if it isn’t to have—children? ... Perhaps you’ll answer me?"