te lily also. Von Rosen looked at her
gratefully. "Thank you," he murmured.

She laughed. "Oh, you need not thank me," she said. "I have a natural
instinct to rescue men from sweets." She laughed again maliciously.
"I am sure you have enjoyed the club very much," she said.

Von Rosen coloured before her sarcastic, kindly eyes. He began to
speak, but she interrupted him. "You have heard that silence is
golden," said she. "It is always golden when speech would be a lie."

Then she turned away and seized upon the chocolate lily and pressed
it upon Mrs. Joy Snyder, who was enjoying adulation and good things.

"Do please have this lovely lily, Mrs. Snyder," she said. "It is the
very prettiest ice of the lot, and meant especially for you. I am
sure you will enjoy it."

And Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder, whose sense of humour deserted her when
she was being praised and fed, and who had already eaten bonbons
innumerable, and three ices with accompanying cake, took the
chocolate lily gratefully. Von Rosen ate his chicken sandwich and
marvelled at the ways of women.

After Von Rosen had finished his sandwiches and tea, he made his way
to Mrs. Snyder, and complimented her upon her lecture. He had a
constitutional dislike for falsehoods, which was perhaps not so much
a virtue as an idiosyncrasy. Now he told Mrs. Snyder that he had
never heard a lecture which seemed to amuse an audience more than
hers had done, and that he quite envied her because of her power of
holding attention. Mrs. Snyder, with the last petal of her chocolate
lily sweet upon her tongue, listened with such a naivete of
acquiescence that she was really charming, and Von Rosen had spoken
the truth. He had wondered, when he saw the eagerly tilted faces of
the women, and heard their bursts of shrill laughter and clapping of
hands, why he could not hold them with his sermons which, he might
assume without vanity, contained considerable subject for thought, as
this woman, with her face like a mask of mirth, held them with her
compilation of platitudes.

He thought that he had never seen so many women listen with such
intensity, and lack of self-consciousness. He had seen only two pat
their hair, only one glance at her glittering rings, only three
arrange the skirts of their gowns while the lecture was in progress.
Sometimes during his sermons, he felt as if he were holding forth to
a bewildering sea of motion with steadily recurrent waves, which
fascinated him, of f