roar of tongues came down to them from the
drawing-room.

"Just listen to those people," said Rendel. A sort of wild, continuous
howl filled the air, as though bursting from a company of the condemned
immured in an eternal prison, instead of from a gathering of peaceable
citizens met together for their diversion. "Isn't it dreadful to realise
what our natural note is like?" he added. "It is hideous."

"It isn't pretty, certainly," said Rachel, unable to help smiling at his
face of disgust. The roar seemed to grow louder as it went on.

"It is a pity we can't chirp and twitter like birds," said Rendel.

"I don't know that that would be very much better," said Rachel. "Have
you ever been in a room with a canary singing? Think of a room with as
many canaries in it as this."

"Yes, I daresay--it might have been nearly as bad," Rendel said; "though
if we were canaries we should be nicer to look at perhaps," and his eye
fell on an unprepossessing elderly couple who were descending the stairs
with none of the winsomeness of singing birds. "Have you read
Maeterlinck's 'Life of the Bees'?"

"No," Rachel answered simply.

"I agree with him," Rendel said, "that it would be just as difficult to
get any idea of what human beings are about by looking down on them from
a height, as it is for us to discover what insects are doing when we
look down on them."

"Yes, imagine looking at that," said Rachel, pointing towards the
drawing-room. "You would see people walking up and down and in and out
for no reason, and jostling each other round and round."

"Yes," said Rendel. "How aimless it would look! Not more aimless than it
is, after all," he added.

"It amuses me, all the same," said Rachel, rather deprecatingly. "I
mean, to come to a party of this kind every now and then; perhaps
because I don't do it very often."

"Why, don't you go out every night of your life in the season?" said
Rendel; "I thought all young ladies did."

"I don't," she said. "It isn't quite the same for me as it is for other
people--at least, I mean that I have only my father to go out with;" and
then, seeing in his face the interpretation he put on her words, she
added, "my mother is an invalid, and we do not like to leave her too
often."

"Ah! but she is alive still," said Rendel, with a tone that sounded as
if he understood what the contrary might have meant.

"Oh yes," said Rachel quickly. "Yes, yes, indeed she is alive," in a
voice that told t