. It was
certainly the fashionable world, for there was no one there whom he had
ever seen before. The walls of the room were covered with pictures--the
very ceiling was painted and framed. The people pushed each other a
little, edged about, advanced and retreated, looking at each other with
differing faces--sometimes blandly, unperceivingly, sometimes with a
harshness of contemplation, a kind of cruelty, Ransom thought; sometimes
with sudden nods and grimaces, inarticulate murmurs, followed by a quick
reaction, a sort of gloom. He was now absolutely certain that he was in
the best society. He was carried further and further forward, and saw
that another room stretched beyond the one he had entered, in which
there was a sort of little stage, covered with a red cloth, and an
immense collection of chairs, arranged in rows. He became aware that
people looked at him, as well as at each other, rather more, indeed,
than at each other, and he wondered whether it were very visible in his
appearance that his being there was a kind of exception. He didn't know
how much his head looked over the heads of others, or that his brown
complexion, fuliginous eye, and straight black hair, the leonine fall of
which I mentioned in the first pages of this narrative, gave him that
relief which, in the best society, has the great advantage of suggesting
a topic. But there were other topics besides, as was proved by a
fragment of conversation, between two ladies, which reached his ear
while he stood rather wistfully wondering where Verena Tarrant might be.

"Are you a member?" one of the ladies said to the other. "I didn't know
you had joined."

"Oh, I haven't; nothing would induce me."

"That's not fair; you have all the fun and none of the responsibility."

"Oh, the--the fun!" exclaimed the second lady.

"You needn't abuse us, or I will never invite you," said the first.

"Well, I thought it was meant to be improving; that's all I mean; very
good for the mind. Now, this woman to-night; isn't she from Boston?"

"Yes, I believe they have brought her on, just for this."

"Well, you must be pretty desperate when you have got to go to Boston
for your entertainment."

"Well, there's a similar society there, and I never heard of their
sending to New York."

"Of course not, they think they have got everything. But doesn't it make
your life a burden thinking what you can possibly have?"

"Oh dear, no. I am going to have Professor Gougenhei