She laughed a silvery little laugh. "Who is that ugly man with her?" "That is _the_ man--Wilfrid Fletcher." "She must be fonder of his purse than of his person." "The most thorough-going of all the philosophies." "Who else is here that you know?" "Well, that very fat man in the third row is Heath, the editor of _The Pilgrim_. He was at Exeter--my college--years ago." "I should have imagined that he was a University man." "Really! Why?" "He is so evidently an apostle of the Extension movement." "That's quite good! Heath is a clever man though, despite his size." "In what way?" "He manages to grasp the changeful modern spirit of the day exactly." "I think I was introduced to him once, somewhere or other." "I believe he does go into society." "Society condones a good deal." "It is condonation incarnate." She looked up at him, and blushed a little. "Perhaps it is as well?" "For some of us?" "_Si loda l'uomo modesto._" "Don't you think modesty is advisable? One never knows how far to go." "One should experiment, then; modesty is more original than natural nowadays." "Originality is only a plagiarism from nature." She opened her fan, moving it quickly. She was not accustomed to be fenced with like this. Gobion's senses were coming back to him, the voluptuousness had gone, and after the first intoxication of her presence, he looked again and found she did not interest him in the way she sought. After the first act he offered to get them some ices, sending them by a man, while he went to the buffet. Heath and Wild were there. "Hullo!" said the former, "who's that pretty woman in your box?" "Picton's wife." "Lionel Picton?" "Yes." "I wouldn't advise you to get mixed up with that lot," he said, making Gobion feel rather guilty as he remembered the article he was going to do for _The Spy_. After a minute Wild moved away. "Such a joke," said Heath, with a grin. "Wild's brought little Blanche Huntley, the typewriter girl, and both Mrs. Wrampling and Will Fletcher are here, and they're saying that Wrampling himself is in the circle! It's a dirty world, my boy, a dirty world." "I wouldn't quarrel with my bread and butter if I were you," said Gobion; "you and I'd be in rather a hole if it wasn't for these little episodes. Mrs. Grundy always was an indecent old person. Ta-ta, see you after at the 'copy shop'?" "Yes, my wife's away in Birmingham, so I won't go home till morning." Gobion went back to the box, where he found Moro de Minter, the new humourist, making himself agreeable. Gobion knew the man slightly, and hated him. People said his real name was Gluckstein, and he was reported to have been a ticket collector at Euston before he had come out as the apostle of the ridiculous. He was holding forth on his latest book, and he asked Gobion what he thought of the new humourists. "I have only met two sorts," he answered, "the disgustingly facetious and the facetiously disgusting. Both are equally nasty."