His sense of divination had so startled her that she turned from him a moment, wondering what attitude to assume. While feigning to listen to the declaiming of Harrigan Blood, she took every opportunity to study him. Massingale, scarcely forty, had an intellectual aristocracy about him that lay in the impersonality of his amused study of others. Yet in this scrutiny there was no accent of criticism. His lips were relaxed in a tolerant humor, and this smile puzzled her. Was he also of this company who sought amusement in a descent to other levels, or was he simply an observer, a man who had ended a phase of life, but who still delighted in the contemplation of the ridiculous, the grotesque and the absurdity of these petty contests of wits? She was aware that he had attacked her imagination in a way no man had tried before, and this presumption awoke an instant spirit of resistance. She stole a glance from time to time in the mirror, but she avoided opportunities for conversation. From the farther end of the table she beheld the guest of the day radiating happiness under a storm of questions from the chorus girls: "Perfectly horrid of you to call yourself count!" "Count, lord, I've got a string of 'em!" "Barons." "Dukes, too. I know Duke of What's-His-Name Biscay. He's a nice boy! Do you know him?" And Georgie Gwynne, flushed with her first success, said to Harrigan Blood, in a permeating aside: "When I get to His Nibs, watch what I'll hand him!" But Harrigan Blood, absorbed in an idea, answered her: "Be quiet now, Georgie--gorge yourself!" "Composing an editorial on luxury, Harrigan?" said Lindaberry, speaking for the first time. Harrigan Blood admitted the patness of the guess with a wave of his hand, leaning heavily on the table with his elbows. He had always an air of being in his shirt-sleeves. "See the _Free Press_ to-morrow," he said, moving his large hand over his face and frowning spasmodically. His eye ran quickly over the menu, calculating the cost per plate, the value of the rare wines, the decorations, the presents and the tips. "Two thousand dollars at the least--four thousand dinners below Fourteenth Street, five years abroad for a genius who is stifling, twenty thousand tired laborers to a moving-picture show. And with what we turn over with our fork and regret, the waste that will be thrown away, a family could live a year! This is civilization and Christianity!" "Appetite good, Harrigan?" said Lindaberry, with an impertinence that few would have ventured. "Better than yours," said Blood impatiently. "Ideas and personalities have no connection. Ends are one thing, instruments another. Who was the greatest of the disciples? St. Paul. He had experienced! Shakespeare--Tolstoy. The caviar is delicious!"