Trenor sulkily yielded his place, and Lily turned a brilliant smile on the newcomer. She had not talked with Dorset since their visit at Bellomont, but something in his look and manner told her that he recalled the friendly footing on which they had last met. He was not a man to whom the expression of admiration came easily: his long sallow face and distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded against the expansive emotions. But, where her own influence was concerned, Lily’s intuitions sent out thread-like feelers, and as she made room for him on the narrow sofa she was sure he found a dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the trouble to make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to him at Bellomont, and was now smiling on him with a divine renewal of kindness. “Well, here we are, in for another six months of caterwauling,” he began complainingly. “Not a shade of difference between this year and last, except that the women have got new clothes and the singers haven’t got new voices. My wife’s musical, you know—puts me through a course of this every winter. It isn’t so bad on Italian nights—then she comes late, and there’s time to digest. But when they give Wagner we have to rush dinner, and I pay up for it. And the draughts are damnable—asphyxia in front and pleurisy in the back. There’s Trenor leaving the box without drawing the curtain! With a hide like that draughts don’t make any difference. Did you ever watch Trenor eat? If you did, you’d wonder why he’s alive; I suppose he’s leather inside too.—But I came to say that my wife wants you to come down to our place next Sunday. Do for heaven’s sake say yes. She’s got a lot of bores coming—intellectual ones, I mean; that’s her new line, you know, and I’m not sure it ain’t worse than the music. Some of ’em have long hair, and they start an argument with the soup, and don’t notice when things are handed to them. The consequence is the dinner gets cold, and I have dyspepsia. That silly ass Silverton brings them to the house—he writes poetry, you know, and Bertha and he are getting tremendously thick. She could write better than any of ’em if she chose, and I don’t blame her for wanting clever fellows about; all I say is: ‘Don’t let me see ’em eat!’” The gist of this strange communication gave Lily a distinct thrill of pleasure. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been nothing surprising in an invitation from Bertha Dorset; but since the Bellomont episode an unavowed hostility had kept the two women apart. Now, with a start of inner wonder, Lily felt that her thirst for retaliation had died out. IF YOU WOULD FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY, says the Malay proverb, FIRST INFLICT A HURT ON HIM; and Lily was experiencing the truth of the apothegm. If she had destroyed Mrs. Dorset’s letters, she might have continued to hate her; but the fact that they remained in her possession had fed her resentment to satiety.