"Oh, Monty's awfully smart! He knows no end. You'll like Monty, I expect. He wants to meet you, awfully; says he likes the look of your photograph. I told him how bally clever you were, and all that. Monty's clever, too; he reads Ibsen." Katharine received this proof of Monty's intellectual ability with some cynicism which, however, she was careful to conceal. "I shall be delighted to meet him," she said. "What time shall I come?" "Oh, any time; four will do. And, I say, Kit, I suppose I must have cream, mustn't I? You can't give Monty milk that's been sitting for hours, and spoof him that it's cream. I've done that sometimes, but you can't spoof Monty." "Oh, I'll bring the cream. I know a shop where they'll let me have it on Sunday," said Katharine confidently; and Ted left comforted. After all, Monty's sister could not come; but Ted's sense of the fitness of things was satisfied by his having asked her, and, as Monty himself came and did not seem afraid of Katharine as all his other friends were, he felt that his tea-party was a success. The only thing that marred his enjoyment was the fact that Katharine, for some unaccountable caprice, refused to be intellectual in spite of the efforts of Monty, whose real name proved to be Montague, to draw her out. Monty was a young man with a gentlemanly view of life, tempered by a great desire to be thought advanced; and he began the conversation with a will. "Awfully clever new thing at the Royalty! Suppose you've seen it, Miss Austen?" he began. "Awfully plucky of the Independent Theatre to put it on, it is really." "Is it?" smiled Katharine. "I haven't seen it yet. Ted and I hate those advanced plays,--they're so slow as a rule. Comic operas, we like best." Monty seemed surprised; and Ted was a little disconcerted by this frank avowal of his own ordinary tastes. "You see, Kit only goes to those things to please me," he said, apologetically. "She's just as keen on all those humpy plays as you are, don't you know?" Monty was not sure that he knew, but he turned to another branch of art. "Talking about posters," he said,--which was only his favourite method of opening a conversation, for nobody was talking about posters at all,--"have you seen that awfully clever one of the new paper, 'The Future'? It's by quite a new man, in the French style, so bold and yet so subtle. But of course you must have seen it." "Oh, yes," laughed Katharine, "I should think I had! You mean the red one, don't you, with a black sun and a cactus thing, and a lot of spots all over it? Ted and I were laughing at it, only yesterday. Do you really think it is good?" Monty said he really did think so; and Ted, who was torn in two by his admiration for both of them, came to his rescue. "You had better be careful, Kitty," he said, anxiously. "Monty does know." "Of course," said Katharine politely, "it is only a matter of taste, isn't it, Mr. Montague?"