She thought his thoughts. She followed his eyes as they turned away from hers, as they turned away from her. Her own were filled only with what filled his. Seeing with his eyes she saw her enemy. She saw her brother.... IX David did not understand or question the spirit in which, the following night, he went with Tom to dine at the apartment of Constance Bardale. She had watched him with large eyes at the table, where he sat mostly silent and very busy with the food that he found delicious. She had manoeuvered him later aside from the chattering group. They talked quietly together. David had no sense of her as yet, beyond the silk cold sheath of an earth-colored dress fending a woman’s body. But he did not suffer. He said to himself: “I don’t know really what to say to her. But it goes all right.” He was pleased at this, grateful to her. He showed it. The opposing group broke into laughter. It broke its confines. A tall massive man stood over the two. “Constance,” he said, “you must hear this.” A thick, foreign accent marred his otherwise perfect English. He was an Austrian: head of the Stegending Galleries on Fifth Avenue where second-rate examples of second-rate old masters fetched first-rate prices. He stood very close to Constance Bardale, who looked askance at him with sly knowledge lighting the flecks in her gray eyes. She seemed to be saying: “So this is the best excuse you could find for breaking into my tête-à-tête? Don’t you see it is hopeless? No, of course, you wouldn’t.” The Austrian’s sally had its success. It was a breach toward the hostess through which now the others began to flow upon her. The guests shifted near. David remarked how directly Mr. Stegending spoke to Miss Bardale. Unlike himself. But he took comfort in his partial isolation. He rested back in it as he would have in his chair had his self-consciousness not made him crane stiffly forward. “It was Fennido’s idea,” said Stegending. “I assure you, Karl, it was Con’s.” Fennido balanced himself with grace. In a half courtesy he thrust out an indicating palm toward his hostess. “Mine?” “Now wait.” Richard Fennido rose to his full plump height. David saw how large his buttocks were, like a woman’s: his small blue eyes peered from beside the curved nose like a bird’s. He was poising evidently for his sort of flight--in words. “I said it was your idea, Constance, and I can prove it.” A little woman at his side laughed prematurely. Her eyes seemed fixed in a sort of perpetual fright. This was Mrs. May Delano, and her great fear was not to appreciate and not to appear at home. Fennido began.