"Yes."

"Well, you know how, when travelling, it is easy to get into intimacies
with people whom one doesn't want to be intimate with at home."

"Yes. I know all about that."

"At my age one has learnt to avoid not only such intimacies but many
others less disagreeable, but which at moments might give one what I can
only call mental gooseflesh. Is that aloofness?"

"I think it would probably be called so by some."

"By whom?"

"Oh, by mental gooseflesh-givers!"

She laughed, laughed quite out with a completeness which had something
almost of youth in it.

"I wonder," he added rather ruefully, after the pause which the laugh
had filled up, "I wonder whether I am one of them?"

"I don't think you are."

"And Ambrose Jennings?"

"That's a clever man!" was her reply.

And then she changed the conversation to criticism in general, and to
the type of clever mind which, unable to create, analyses the creations
of others sensitively.

"But I much prefer the creators," she presently said.

"So do I. They are like the fresh air compared with the air in a
carefully closed room," said Craven. "Talking of closed rooms, don't you
think it is strange the liking many brilliant men and women have, both
creators and analysers of creators, for the atmosphere of garish or
sordid cafes?"

"You are thinking of the Cafe Royal?"

"Yes. Do you know it?"

"Don't tell Beryl--but I have never been in it. Nevertheless, I know
exactly what it is like."

"By hearsay?"

"Oh, no. In years gone by I have been into many of the cafes in Paris."

"And did you like them and the life in them?"

"In those days they often fascinated me, as no doubt the Cafe Royal and
its life fascinates Beryl to-day. The hectic appeals to something in
youth, when there is often fever in the blood. Strong lights, noise, the
human pressure of crowds, the sight of myriads of faces, the sound of
many voices--all that represents life to us when we are young. Calm,
empty spaces, single notes, room all round us for breathing amply and
fully, a face here or there--that doesn't seem like life to us then.
Beryl dines with me alone sometimes. But she must finish up in the
evening with a crowd if she is near the door of the place where the
crowd is. And you must not tell me you never like the Cafe Royal, for if
you do I shall not believe you."

"I do like it at times," he acknowledged. "But to-night, sitting here,
the mere thought of it is almost hateful to