Through the open door she heard the continuous rustling descent of residents. All the tables would be full. So much the better, in case her oddly asserted party should produce long silences. She felt no desire for conversation and wondered as she led the way downstairs whether hostesses in general suffered the indifference that now held her in its grip. And if they did, why the business of entertainment was not abolished. She remembered how porous to the onlooking eye were people gathered talking at a feast. To be merely a silent guest was troublesome enough, but it was nothing to the burden of being obliged to produce, before the assembled eyes of the twenty residents even the semblance of a dinner-party. The dining-room was full of sound as she went in followed by the two men, held a little in the rear by the backward sweep of her long gown; a fabric of sound unbroken at any point in the rows of tables set against the walls, and all, even the one she had selected, fully occupied. All heads were averted, intent towards centres. Gentlewomen. Yes; but those were just the people who saw without looking. Here was the secretary at her elbow, smilingly indicating.... Miss Holland was right, there in the central pool of light, well away from the serried ranks of small square tables, was the club’s settlement of the problem of five diners, a round table, gleaming with silver and glass and festive with bowls of flowers. As they took their places, falling accidentally into the best distribution for her serenity, herself facing away from the main wall and its unbroken row of diners, Michael on her right giving them his impressive profile, and Densley across the way, his fine easy presence set full towards them, a servant announced the arrival of the Taylors. She left her party begun, with Densley, grave and kindly, set towards Michael to draw from him and cherish, just anything it might occur to him to say. Dora and George, unbelievably there, brought to the decorous hall its furthest reach of odd experience. They came from so much further than the long distance they had travelled across London to spend an evening in the land that to them was not even Philistia, but just Bedlam. The Bedlam of an illusion so monstrous as to be comic—for all observers but those who toiled helplessly at its provisioning; George’s “under-dog.”