emme!"

She put her hands to her ears. "Listen. Que-vous-etes-femme" she said.

"Que-vous-etes-femme," Paul repeated parrotwise. "Is that better?"

"A little."

"I see the Greek Kalends have begun," said he.

"Mechant, you have caught me in a trap," said she.

And they both laughed.

From which entirely foolish conversation it may be gathered that
between our Fortunate Youth and the Princess some genial sun had melted
the icy barriers of formality. He had known her for eighteen months,
ever since she had bought Chetwood Park and settled down as the great
personage of the countryside. He had met her many times, both in London
and in Morebury; he had dined in state at her house; he had shot her
partridges; he had danced with her; he had sat out dances with her,
notably on one recent June night, in a London garden, where they lost
themselves for an hour in the discussion of the relative parts that
love played in a woman's life and in a man's. The Princess was French,
ancien regime, of the blood of the Coligny, and she had married, in the
French practical way, the Prince Zobraska, in whose career the only
satisfactory incident history has to relate is the mere fact of his
early demise. The details are less exhilarating. The poor little
Princess, happily widowed at one-and-twenty, had shivered the idea of
love out of her system for some years. Then, as is the way of woman,
she regained her curiosities. Great lady, of enormous fortune, she
could have satisfied them, had she so chosen, with the large cynicism
of a Catherine of Russia. She could also, had she so chosen, have
married one of a hundred sighing and decorous gentlemen; but with none
of them had she fallen ever so little in love, and without love she
determined to try no more experiments; her determination, however, did
not involve surrender of interest in the subject. Hence the notable
discussion on the June night. Hence, perhaps, after a few other
meetings of a formal character, the prettily intimate invitation she
had sent to Paul.

They were still laughing at the turn of the foolish conversation when
the other guests began to enter the drawing-room. First came Edward
Doon, the Egyptologist, a good-looking man of forty, having the air of
a spruce don, with a pretty young wife, Lady Angela Doon; then Count
Lavretsky, of the Russian Embassy, and Countess Lavretsky; Lord Bantry,
a young Irish peer with literary ambitions; and a Mademoiselle de
Cressy, a con