ikes to see her rooms filled with pretty dresses,
but she has no social instincts and no social inspiration whatever.
She lights and heats and feeds her guests, and then she leaves them to
themselves. She's a kind woman--Jane is a very good-natured woman, and I
really think she'd be grieved if she thought any one went away unhappy,
but she does nothing to make them at home in her house--absolutely
nothing."

"Perhaps she does all they deserve for them. I don't know that any one
acquires merit by coming to an evening party; and it's impossible to be
personally hospitable to everybody in such a crowd."

"Yes, I've sometimes taken that view of it. And yet if you ask a
stranger to your house, you establish a tacit understanding with him
that you won't forget him after you have him there. I like to go about
and note the mystification of strangers who've come here with some
notion of a little attention. It's delightfully poignant; I suffer with
them; it's a cheap luxury of woe; I follow them through all the turns
and windings of their experience. Of course the theory is that, being
turned loose here with the rest, they may speak to anybody; but the fact
is, they can't. Sometimes I should like to hail some of these unfriended
spirits, but I haven't the courage. I'm not individually bashful, but I
have a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon civilisation behind me. There ought
to be policemen, to show strangers about and be kind to them. I've just
seen two pretty women cast away in a corner, and clinging to a small
water-colour on the wall with a show of interest that would melt a heart
of stone. Why do you come, Mrs. Brinkley? I should like to know. You're
not obliged to."

"No," said Mrs. Brinkley, lowering her voice instinctively, as if to
bring his down. "I suppose I come from force of habit I've been coming a
long time, you know. Why do you come?"

"Because I can't sleep. If I could sleep, I should be at home in bed."
A weariness came into his thin face and dim eyes that was pathetic,
and passed into a whimsical sarcasm. "I'm not one of the great leisure
class, you know, that voluntarily turns night into day. Do you know what
I go about saying now?"

"Something amusing, I suppose."

"You'd better not be so sure of that. I've discovered a fact, or rather
I've formulated an old one. I've always been troubled how to classify
people here, there are so many exceptions; and I've ended by broadly
generalising them as women and men