many weeks.

"I suppose she 's right," he thought--"I suppose she 's right. I ought
not to have tried to speak to her!" As a matter of fact, he did not at
all feel that she was right.

CHAPTER XIII

AN "AT HOME"

On Tuesday morning he wandered off to Paddington, hoping for a
chance view of her on her way down to Holm Oaks; but the sense of the
ridiculous, on which he had been nurtured, was strong enough to keep
him from actually entering the station and lurking about until she came.
With a pang of disappointment he retraced his steps from Praed Street to
the Park, and once there tried no further to waylay her. He paid a round
of calls in the afternoon, mostly on her relations; and, seeking out
Aunt Charlotte, he dolorously related his encounter in the Row. But
she found it "rather nice," and on his pressing her with his views, she
murmured that it was "quite romantic, don't you know."

"Still, it's very hard," said Shelton; and he went away disconsolate.

As he was dressing for dinner his eye fell on a card announcing the "at
home" of one of his own cousins. Her husband was a composer, and he had
a vague idea that he would find at the house of a composer some quite
unusually free kind of atmosphere. After dining at the club, therefore,
he set out for Chelsea. The party was held in a large room on the
ground-floor, which was already crowded with people when Shelton
entered. They stood or sat about in groups with smiles fixed on their
lips, and the light from balloon-like lamps fell in patches on their
heads and hands and shoulders. Someone had just finished rendering on
the piano a composition of his own. An expert could at once have picked
out from amongst the applauding company those who were musicians by
profession, for their eyes sparkled, and a certain acidity pervaded
their enthusiasm. This freemasonry of professional intolerance flew from
one to the other like a breath of unanimity, and the faint shrugging of
shoulders was as harmonious as though one of the high windows had been
opened suddenly, admitting a draught of chill May air.

Shelton made his way up to his cousin--a fragile, grey-haired woman in
black velvet and Venetian lace, whose starry eyes beamed at him, until
her duties, after the custom of these social gatherings, obliged her to
break off conversation just as it began to interest him. He was passed
on to another lady who was already talking to two gentlemen, and, their
volubility bein