I knew who Ball was; it is Peter Ball, and Christina likes him. She hasn't said or typed anything against marriage since she knew him. It was at a concert that some friends of hers gave in Queen's Gate, that she first met him. I was with her, and we all sat in rows on rout seats, that skidded and flew off like shirt-buttons across the room whenever you got up suddenly. Peter Ball sat next us, and his legs were long, though his feet were small. He had a golden beard, which I hate, and so, I thought, did Christina. She had always said there was one thing she would not marry, and that was a beard. He wished out loud that he hadn't got let in for the sitting-down seats, so that he could not make a clean bolt of it when he had had enough of Miss Squallini. There was not any Miss of that name on the programme, so though he said loud, no one could be offended. A Maddle. Xeres told us quite slyly, lifting her eyebrows up and down, that "she knew a bank!" as if she had got up early like the worm, and found it all by herself. After that, one of the spare hostesses came wandering by and introduced him to us. He began to talk to Christina without looking at her, and gradually he forgot his legs and put one under the rout seat in front of him and lifted it up without thinking. The lady on it looked round indignantly and Christina smiled. After that he talked to us all through the programme though people shoo'd him, and then he stopped for a little and apologized, and went on again. "I don't often turn up at this sort of function, do you?" he asked Christina. "No, I do not," she replied, "I have too much to do as a general thing." "And stay at home and do it," said he; "you're wise." "I have to!" said Christina. "Oh," she sighed, "I am so dreadfully hot." It was June. "Why do you wear that bag?" he said, meaning her motor tulle veil, which was absurdly thick and made her look as if she had small-pox. But every one else apparently had a different form of the same disease, shown by a different size in spots. She said so, and that she wore a veil like every one else. "Get out of it, can't you, and let me take care of it for you, and that boa thing you have got round your neck." She took it off, and the boa, and gave them to him. "I am afraid you will drop the boa, and let the veil work under the seat," she said in a fright, as he nipped them both in one great hand. So he pinned them, boa, veil, and all, to his grey speckled trousers with her hat-pin, and sat all through the rest of the concert, looking at the bunch at his knee. I never saw a man like that before, he didn't seem at all like the people who come to Cinque Cento House. I didn't seem to see him there, and I rather thought I should like to. Why, he would make George straighten his back! "I say," he said presently, "do you like gramophones?" "I love them," said Christina, and I knew it was a lie.