'Mind?' interposed Tommy. 'Gracious, no! He's playing the game too; he knows all about it. He won't let on that he does, of course, but he does all the same.' 'The reason is,' said Childwick, speaking with lightning speed, 'that the intellect merely disestablishes morality, while the emotions disregard it. Thank you for having heard me with such patience, ladies and gentlemen.' He finished his champagne with a triumphant air. 'You beat us that time,' said Peggy, with a smile of congratulation. Elfreda Flood addressed Harnack, apparently resuming an interrupted conversation. 'If I wear green I look horrid, and if she wears blue she looks horrid, and if we don't wear either green or blue, the scene looks horrid. I'm sure I don't know what to do.' 'It'll end in your having to wear green,' prophesied Harnack. 'I suppose it will,' Elfreda moaned disconsolately. 'She always gets her way.' 'I happen to know he reviewed it,' declared Arty Kane with some warmth, 'because he spelt "dreamed" with a "t." He always does. And he'd dined with me only two nights before!' 'Where?' asked Manson Smith. 'At my own rooms.' 'Then he certainly wrote it. I've dined with you there myself.' Trix had fallen into silence, and Airey Newton seemed content not to disturb her. The snatches of varied talk fell on her ears, each with its implication of a different interest and a different life, all foreign to her. The very frivolity, the sort of schoolboy and chaffy friendliness of everybody's tone, was new in her experience, when it was united, as here it seemed to be, with a liveliness of wits and a nimble play of thought. The effect, so far as she could sum it up, was of carelessness combined with interest, independence without indifference, an alertness of mind which laughter softened. These people, she thought, were all poor (she did not include Tommy Trent, who was more of her own world), they were none of them well known, they did not particularly care to be, they aspired to no great position. No doubt they had to fight for themselves sometimes--witness Elfreda and her battle of the colours--but they fought as little as they could, and laughed while they fought, if fight they must. But they all thought and felt; they had emotions and brains. She knew, looking at Mrs. John's delicate fine face, that she too had brains, though she did not talk. 'I don't say,' began Childwick once more, 'that when Mrs. John puts us in a book, as she does once a year, she fails to do justice to our conversation, but she lamentably neglects and misrepresents her own.' Trix had been momentarily uneasy, but Mrs. John was smiling merrily. 'I miss her pregnant assents, her brief but weighty disagreements, the rich background of silence which she imparts to the entertainment.' Yes, Mrs. John had brains too, and evidently Miles Childwick and the rest knew it.