"She was close to me, it was dangerous, and I can only bear a certain amount of that kind of thing, for my sort of restraint is due entirely to a desire for, well, greater efficiency.... But why will women do that, why will they step in where men fear to tread? I only speak from my own paltry experience, of course, but the only two real affairs I've had would have gone sadly awry if the women had had their way, if it hadn't been for my mania for organisation.... But I couldn't stand there another second, holding my breath over that face, that scent. She was wearing an orchid, too, and an orchid takes its scent from a woman's body, you can't really smell it except when it is entangled in a woman's breath. It was an exquisite, damnable addition. I had to break loose. "'Encouraged as I am being to enter for the correspondent stakes,' I said impertinently, 'I am being most awfully neglected as a guest.' "The darling, how she laughed! She had the kind of large soft mouth that's made for laughter--until one day you find it's made for tragedy. "Not then, nor later, did I see any servant about. But the table was admirably arranged. I am a commonplace enough person, I think of food in terms of _cantaloup_ and _caviare_ and damn the labour question; one would be a charming person if one had ten thousand a year. And so, though I would have been surprised if the supper had not been good, I was surprised that it was so good; for women, as you know, are rather bewildering in their choice of food, generally I don't trust 'em, but she--how well she had plumbed the particular male beastliness which I, anyway, affect! Oh, her age? About that of Mary Stuart when Bothwell and Swinburne fell in love with her.... "It was as we sat down to supper that I really looked round the room for the first time, and noticed a full length portrait in oils on a wall by the door; of a very distinguished-looking person indeed, in the toy uniform of some foreign cavalry--Italian, I imagined. But, gorgeously decorated and hilted as he was, his chest emblazoned with the ribbons of orders (merited as much by his birth as by any action, one thought), there was a great air of distinction about the man which discounted as well as harmonised with his ridiculous trappings. The slim, perhaps too waisted, figure bore a thin hawk-like face, which with its perfectly poised mixture of ferocity and courtesy would have carried its fortunate owner as easily into the heart of any schoolboy as into the _boudoir_ of the most unattainable lady; and sweeping _moustachios_ somehow added prominence to the long, delicate, very arched nose--surely the nose of a Roman person, I ventured to myself at the end of my long glance. And as I turned to my hostess, she explained quickly that the decoration was her husband. "'A very charming and considerate person,' she said, 'who apologises for being neglected by me.'