y
was Monson and his lessons. I had thought I was estimating at its proper
value what he was teaching. But so earnest and serious am I by nature,
and so earnest and serious was he about those trivialities that he had
been brought up to regard as the whole of life, that I had unconsciously
absorbed his attitude; I was like a fellow who, after cramming hard for
an examination, finds that all the questions put to him are on things he
hasn't looked at. I had been making an ass of myself, and that evening
I got the first instalment of my sound and just punishment. I who had
prided myself on being ready for anything or anybody, I who had laughed
contemptuously when I read how men and women, presented at European courts,
made fools of themselves--I was made ridiculous by these people who, as I
well know, had nothing to back their pretensions to superiority but a
barefaced bluff.

Perhaps, had I thought this out at the table, I should have got back to
myself and my normal ease; but I didn't, and that long and terrible dinner
was one long and terrible agony of stage fright. When the ladies withdrew,
the other men drew together, talking of people I did not know and of
things I did not care about--I thought then that they were avoiding me
deliberately as a flock of tame ducks avoids a wild one that some wind has
accidentally blown down among them. I know now that my forbidding aspect
must have been responsible for my isolations, However, I sat alone,
sullenly resisting old Ellersly's constrained efforts to get me into
the conversation, and angrily suspicious that Langdon was enjoying my
discomfiture more than the cigarette he was apparently absorbed in.

Old Ellersly, growing more and more nervous before my dark and sullen look,
finally seated himself beside me. "I hope you'll stay after the others have
gone," said he. "They'll leave early, and we can have a quiet smoke and
talk."

All unstrung though I was, I yet had the desperate courage to resolve that
I'd not leave, defeated in the eyes of the one person whose opinion I
really cared about. "Very well," said I, in reply to him.

He and I did not follow the others to the drawing-room, but turned into
the library adjoining. From where I seated myself I could see part of the
drawing-room--saw the others leaving, saw Langdon lingering, ignoring
the impatient glances of his wife, while he talked on and on with Miss
Ellersly. Her face was full toward me; she was not aware that I w