on them some day."

"All of them?"

He took the cards from her and glanced through them.

"Let me see. Charlie Gorst--we must be nice to him."

"Is _he_ nice?"

"I think so. Edie's very fond of him."

"And Mrs. Lawson Hannay?"

"Oh, you must call on her."

"Shall I like her."

"Possibly. You needn't see much of her if you don't."

"Is it easy to drop people?"

"Perfectly."

"And what about Mrs. Ransome?"

He frowned. "Has _she_ called?"

"Yes."

"I'll find out when she's not at home and let you know. You can call
then."

A fourth card he tore up and threw into the fire.

"Some people have confounded impudence."

Anne went away confirmed in her impression that Walter had a large
acquaintance to whom he was by no means anxious to introduce his wife. He
might, she reflected, have incurred the connection through the misfortune
of his business. The life of a ship-owner in Scale was fruitful in these
embarrassments.

But if these disagreeable people indeed belonged to the period she
mentally referred to as his "past," she was not going to tolerate them
for an instant. He must give them up.

She judged that he was prepared for so much renunciation. She hoped that
he would, in time, adopt her friends in place of them. He was inclined,
after all, to respond amicably to Mrs. Eliott's overtures.

Anne wondered how he would comport himself at the dinner on the
fifteenth. She owned to a little uneasiness at the prospect. Would he
indeed yield to the sobering influence of Thurston Square? Or would he
try to impose his alien, his startling personality on it? She had begun
to realise how alien he was, how startling he could be. Would he sit
silent, uninspiring and uninspired? Or would unholy and untimely
inspirations seize him? Would he scatter to the winds all conversational
conventions, and riot in his own unintelligible frivolity? What would he
say to Mrs. Eliott, that priestess of the pure intellect? Was there
anything in him that could be touched by her uncoloured, immaterial
charm? Would he see that Mr. Eliott's density was only a mask? Would
the Gardners bore him? And would he like Miss Proctor? And if he
didn't, would he show it, and how? His mere manners would, she knew, be
irreproachable, but she had no security for his spiritual behaviour. He
impressed her as a creature uncaught, undriven; graceful, but
immeasurably capricious.

The event surprised her.

For the first five minutes or so, it s