moment.

"Please don't think that I am laying down the law," he said. "I have
been out so little, the last few years, that I ought not, perhaps, to
criticise. Lady Cynthia, however, seems to me to belong to the extreme
section of the younger generation, the section who have a sort of craze
for the unusual, whose taste in art and living is distorted and
bizarre. You know what I mean, don't you--black drawing-rooms,
futurist wall-papers, opium dens and a cocaine box! It's to some extent
affectation, of course, but it's a folly that claims its victims."

She studied him for a moment attentively. His leanness was the leanness
of muscular strength and condition, his face was full of vigour and
determination.

"You at least have escaped the abnormal," she remarked. "I am not quite
sure how the entertainments at The Walled House would appeal to you, but
if my father should invite you there, I should advise you not to go."

"Why not?" he asked.

She hesitated for a moment.

"I really don't know why I should trouble to give you advice," she said.
"As a matter of fact, I don't care whether you go or not. In any case,
you are scarcely likely to be asked."

"I am not sure that I agree with you," he protested. "Your father seems
to have taken quite a fancy to me."

"And you?" she murmured.

"Well, I like the way he bought that horse," Francis admitted. "And I am
beginning to realise that there may be something in the theory which
he advanced when he invited me to accompany him here this evening--that
there is a certain piquancy in one's intercourse with an enemy, which
friendship lacks. There may be complexities in his character which as
yet I have not appreciated."

The curtain had gone up and the last act of the opera had commenced.
She leaned back in her chair. Without a word or even a gesture, he
understood that a curtain had been let down between them. He obeyed her
unspoken wish and relapsed into silence. Her very absorption, after all,
was a hopeful sign. She would have him believe that she felt nothing,
that she was living outside all the passion and sentiment of life.
Yet she was absorbed in the music.... Sir Timothy came back and seated
himself silently. It was not until the tumult of applause which broke
out after the great song of the French ouvrier, that a word passed
between them.

"Cavalisti is better," Sir Timothy commented. "This man has not the
breadth of passion. At times he is merely peevish."

Sh