"I was still standing. She had turned towards me in her chair, and was looking up at me. She smiled up at me, with a pretty pretence at pathos, and very lightly her fingers just touched my arm.... "'Please, will you not mind my depriving you of the pleasure of showing me how charming a host you can be? And anyway, it is so much more important for me to show you my qualities as a hostess. I have something of a reputation for that, I must warn you.' "That quickly found note of intimacy, how fascinating it is! This woman could turn a drawing-room into an adventure, and an adventure into a drawing-room, all by a particular quality of--what is it? eye, voice, manner, ancestry? God knows! But all, all a snare and a delusion.... "Her electric brougham took us away from the deserted theatre. I was of course too interested in my companion to notice where we were going. I had a vague idea of Piccadilly, that's all.... She was very amusing. We had stepped off the ice too quickly, if indeed we had ever been on it, to get back to it in any way, and the twenty minutes or so of that gliding motion passed in one pleasant moment. "'But perhaps you would prefer me to be haughty,' she said suddenly, 'or how do you say it--county? It would perhaps be more becoming in a woman who does not yet know the name of her guest?' "'You drive me into a fatuous corner,' I said. 'For what on earth can I answer but that you can well afford not to be county or any stuff of that kind?' "She turned her eyes quickly on mine; suddenly, she was very serious. She brooded on me for a swift, palpable second. "'You really, really mean that you do not think me--ah, it is very delicate!--well, you don't think me "cheap" for letting this happen, like this? But,' she laughed as suddenly, 'but forgive me,' she said. 'I was not trusting my own judgment.... And besides you have just said that your father is a Bishop!' "It was as she was about to step out of the brougham that she said: 'It has a charm, our adventure. You are so delightful a partner, you "play up." It is most unusual in men.... And perhaps, too, you are good at forgetting?' "'Am I being threatened?' I had to ask. "'But no, you are being trusted!' she said, very gently.... "I followed her into the house a little shamefacedly; taken, as it were, out of my stride. There seemed, don't you see, to be no tattered edges about this woman, there was a finesse about her every emotion and movement, it was as though every mood and motive had been polished to perfection before it became articulate in word or gesture. She was deplorably civilized. "The house was of the sort that one would have expected of her, though I can't specify what that was; and exactly where it was, as I've said, I didn't realize, though it couldn't have been a hundred miles away from Hyde Park Corner.