ds a corner of the room, 'this is Mr. Knight.' She sniggered on the
name. 'He's just dropped into the National Gallery.'

Then Mrs. Ashton Portway sailed off to receive other guests, and Henry
was alone with Miss Marchrose in a nook between a cabinet and a
phonograph. Many eyes were upon them. Miss Marchrose, a woman of thirty,
with a thin face and an amorphous body draped in two shades of olive,
was obviously flattered.

'Be frank, and admit you've never heard of me,' she said.

'Oh yes, I have,' he lied.

'Do you often go to the National Gallery, Mr. Knight?'

'Not as often as I ought.'

Pause.

Several observant women began to think that Miss Marchrose was not
making the best of Henry--that, indeed, she had proved unworthy of an
unmerited honour.

'I sometimes think----' Miss Marchrose essayed.

But a young lady got up in the middle of the room, and with
extraordinary self-command and presence of mind began to recite
Wordsworth's 'The Brothers.' She continued to recite and recite until
she had finished it, and then sat down amid universal joy.

'Matthew Arnold said that was the greatest poem of the century,'
remarked a man near the phonograph.

'You'll pardon me,' said Miss Marchrose, turning to him. 'If you are
thinking of Matthew Arnold's introduction to the selected poems, you'll
and----'

'My dear,' said Mrs. Ashton Portway, suddenly looming up opposite the
reciter, 'what a memory you have!'

'Was it so long, then?' murmured a tall man with spectacles and a light
wavy beard.

'I shall send you back to Paris, Mr. Dolbiac,' said Mrs. Ashton Portway,
'if you are too witty.' The hostess smiled and sniggered, but it was
generally felt that Mr. Dolbiac's remark had not been in the best taste.

For a few moments Henry was alone and uncared for, and he examined his
surroundings. His first conclusion was that there was not a pretty woman
in the room, and his second, that this fact had not escaped the notice
of several other men who were hanging about in corners. Then Mrs. Ashton
Portway, having accomplished the task of receiving, beckoned him, and
intimated to him that, being a lion and the king of beasts, he must
roar. 'I think everyone here has done something,' she said as she took
him round and forced him to roar. His roaring was a miserable fiasco,
but most people mistook it for the latest fashion in roaring, and were
impressed.

'Now you must take someone down to get something to eat,' she appris