She smiled assent, and leaned on his arm with a light, confiding pressure, to which he no more responded than if his muscles had been rigid iron. Her heart beat quickly with a sense of gratified vanity and exultant expectancy,--but his throbbed slowly and heavily, chilled by the double frost of age and solitude. CHAPTER III To see people eating is understood to be a very interesting and "brilliant" spectacle, and however insignificant you may be in the social world, you get a reflex of its "brilliancy" when you allow people in their turn to see you eating likewise. A well-cooked, well-served supper is a "function," in which every man and woman who can move a jaw takes part, and though in plain parlance there is nothing uglier than the act of putting food into one's mouth, we have persuaded ourselves that it is a pretty and pleasant performance enough for us to ask our friends to see us do it. Byron's idea that human beings should eat privately and apart, was not altogether without aesthetic justification, though according to medical authority such a procedure would be very injurious to health. The slow mastication of a meal in the presence of cheerful company is said to promote healthy digestion--moreover, custom and habit make even the most incongruous things acceptable, therefore the display of tables, crowded with food-stuffs and surrounded by eating, drinking, chattering and perspiring men and women, does not affect us to any sense of the ridiculous or the unseemly. On the contrary, when some of us see such tables, we exclaim "How lovely!" or "How delightful!" according to our own pet vocabulary, or to our knowledge of the humour of our host or hostess,--or perhaps, if we are young cynics, tired of life before we have confronted one of its problems, we murmur, "Not so bad!" or "Fairly decent!" when we are introduced to the costly and appetising delicacies heaped up round masses of flowers and silver for our consideration and entertainment. At the supper given by David Helmsley for Lucy Sorrel's twenty-first birthday, there was, however, no note of dissatisfaction--the _blase_ breath of the callow critic emitted no withering blight, and even latter-day satirists in their teens, frosted like tender pease-blossom before their prime, condescended to approve the lavish generosity, combined with the perfect taste, which made the festive scene a glowing picture of luxury and elegance. But Helmsley himself, as he led his beautiful partner, "the" guest of the evening, to the head of the principal table, and took his place beside her, was conscious of no personal pleasure, but only of a dreary feeling which seemed lonelier than loneliness and more sorrowful than sorrow. The wearied scorn that he had lately begun to entertain for himself, his wealth, his business, his influence, and all his surroundings, was embittered by a disappointment none the less keen because he had dimly foreseen it. The