efly
because of the wardrobe of marvellous Turkish towels. Then he clicked
his way back to his bedroom, changed his shirt and combed his hair in
the blue silk bedroom with the Greuze picture, and felt a little dim and
superficial surprise. He had fallen into country house parties before,
but never into quite such a plushy sense of riches. He felt he ought to
have his breath taken away. But alas, the cinema has taken our breath
away so often, investing us in all the splendours of the splendidest
American millionaire, or all the heroics and marvels of the Somme or the
North Pole, that life has now no magnate richer than we, no hero nobler
than we have been, on the film. _Connu_! _Connu_! Everything life has to
offer is known to us, couldn't be known better, from the film.

So Aaron tied his tie in front of a big Venice mirror, and nothing was
a surprise to him. He found a footman hovering to escort him to the
dining-room--a real Italian footman, uneasy because milady's dinner was
unsettled. He entered the rather small dining-room, and saw the people
at table.

He was told various names: bowed to a young, slim woman with big
blue eyes and dark hair like a photograph, then to a smaller rather
colourless young woman with a large nose: then to a stout, rubicund,
bald colonel, and to a tall, thin, Oxford-looking major with a black
patch over his eye--both these men in khaki: finally to a good-looking,
well-nourished young man in a dinner-jacket, and he sat down to his
soup, on his hostess' left hand. The colonel sat on her right, and was
confidential. Little Sir William, with his hair and his beard white like
spun glass, his manner very courteous and animated, the purple facings
of his velvet jacket very impressive, sat at the far end of the table
jesting with the ladies and showing his teeth in an old man's smile, a
little bit affected, but pleasant, wishing everybody to be happy.

Aaron ate his soup, trying to catch up. Milady's own confidential
Italian butler, fidelity itself, hovered quivering near, spiritually
helping the newcomer to catch up. Two nice little entree dishes,
specially prepared for Aaron to take the place of the bygone fish and
vol au-vents of the proper dinner, testified to the courtesy and charity
of his hostess.

Well, eating rapidly, he had more or less caught up by the time the
sweets came. So he swallowed a glass of wine and looked round. His
hostess with her pearls, and her diamond star in her gr