air. If I had it in my hand I
could snap any one of you here, at this moment, almost without your
knowing anything about it."

"I am so glad you haven't," Lady Gore couldn't help ejaculating.

"The man who was showing it took one of me as I turned to look at it. It
is perfectly wonderful."

"And that in a room?" Miss Tarlton said, more and more awestruck. "And
simply a snapshot, not a time exposure at all?"

"Precisely," Pateley said.

"I shall go and see it," Miss Tarlton said, and, notebook in hand, she
continued with a businesslike air to write down the particulars
communicated by Pateley.

"I am quite out of my depth," Lady Gore said to Wentworth. "What does a
'time exposure' mean?"

"Heaven knows," said Wentworth. "Something about seconds and things, I
suppose."

"I can never judge of how many seconds a thing takes," said Lady Gore.

"I'm sure I can't," Wentworth replied. "The other day I thought we had
been three-quarters of an hour in a tunnel and we had only been two
minutes and a half."

"Now then," Pateley said with a satisfied air, turning to Sir William,
"I have cheered Miss Tarlton on to a piece of extravagance." Sir
William felt a distinct sense of pleasure. "I have persuaded her to buy
a new machine."

"The thing that amuses me," said Sir William with some scorn, having
apparently forgotten which of his pet aversions had been the subject of
the conversation, "is people's theory that when once you have bought a
bicycle it costs you nothing afterwards."

"It is not a bicycle, Sir William, it is a camera," said Miss Tarlton,
with some asperity.

"Oh, well, it is the same thing," Sir William said.

"_The same thing?_" Miss Tarlton repeated, with the accent of one who
feels an immeasurable mental gulf between herself and her interlocutor.

"As to results, I mean," he said. Arrived at this point Miss Tarlton
felt she need no longer listen, she simply noted with pitying tolerance
the random utterance. "A camera costs very nearly as much to keep as a
horse, what with films and bottles of stuff, and all the other
accessories. And as for a bicycle, I am quite sure that you have to
count as much for mending it as you do for a horse's keep."

"The really expensive thing, though, is a motor," said Wentworth. "Lots
of men nowadays don't marry because they can't afford to keep a wife as
well as a motor."

Rendel, who was standing by Rachel's side at the tea-table, caught this
sentence. He looked