ly is worse than dentistry,
you know, because you are not allowed gas.'

'At least, not laughing gas, but only gaseous laughter and small
talk,' I suggested.

'Which makes you all hazy and muddled without the compensating boon of
unconsciousness. But you are an author and a journalist, Mr. Freydon--my
brother often speaks of you, you know--and so you must have had
lots of experience of this sort of thing; enough to have made you as
hardened as royalty, I should think. I always think of authors and
journalists as living very much in the limelight.'

I explained that some might, but that I had spent several years in
Dorking without, until that day, attending a single social function of
any kind. This seemed to interest her greatly, once I had overcome her
initial incredulity on the point. Then I had to answer questions about
my way of living, and one or two, of a discreet and gently curious
kind, about my methods of working, and the like. There was flattery of
the most delightful kind in the one or two casual references she made
to characters in books of mine. Miss Lane never said: 'I have read
your books,' or, 'I have been interested by your books,' statements
which always produce an awkward pause, and are not interesting in
themselves. But she showed in a much more pleasing way that one's work
had entered into her life, and been welcomed by her.

Quite apart from this, I do not think I could possibly have spent a
quarter of an hour with Cynthia Lane without concluding that she was
the most charming woman I had ever met. 'Charming woman,' I say.
Heavens! How extraordinarily inadequate these threadbare words do
look, as I write them, recalling the image of Cynthia Lane as she
paced with me across that smooth-shaven lawn--green velvet it seemed,
deeply shaded here and there by noble copper beeches.

I suppose Cynthia was beautiful, even judged by technical standards;
for her figure was lissom and very shapely, and the contour of her
sweet face perfect--so far, at least, as I am any judge of such
matters. Her eyes and her hair had a rare loveliness which I have not
seen equalled. But it was the soul of her, the indefinable essence
that was Cynthia Lane, which made her truly lovely. This personality
of hers, at once tender and adroit, bright and grave, humorous and
most sweetly gentle, most admirably kind, shone out upon one from her
face, from her very movements and gestures even, giving to her outward
person a soft r