r's, and
there are two things which I find as difficult as Kipling's 'silly
sailors' found their harps 'which they twanged unhandily.'"

"Is small talk one of them?" asked Hugh. "It has always been a
difficulty to me."

"On the contrary," said Rachel. "I plume myself on that. Surely my
present sample is not so much below the average that you need ask me
that."

"I did not recognize that it _was_ small talk," said Hugh, with a faint
smile. "If it really is, I can only say I shall have brain fever if you
pass on to what _you_ might call conversation."

It was to him as if a miniature wavelet of a great ocean somewhere in
the distance had crept up to laugh and break at his feet. He did not
recognize that this tiniest runlet which fell back at once was of the
same element as the tidal wave which had swept over him yesternight.

"But are you aware," said Rachel, dropping her voice a little, "it is
beginning to dawn upon me that this evening's gathering is met together
for exalted conversation, and perhaps we ought to be practising a
little. I feel certain that after dinner you will be 'drawn through the
clefts of confession' by Miss Barker, the woman in the high dinner gown
with orange velvet sleeves. Mrs. Loftus introduced her to me when I
arrived as the 'apostle of humanity.'"

"Why should you fix on that particular apostle for me?" said Hugh,
looking resentfully at a large-faced woman who was talking in an
"intense" manner to a slightly bewildered Bishop.

"It is a prophetic instinct, nothing more."

"I will have a prophetic instinct, too, then," said Hugh, helping
himself at last to the dish which was presented to him, to Rachel's
relief. "I shall give you the--" looking slowly down the table.

"The Bishop?"

"Certainly not, after your disposal of me."

"Well, then, the poet? I am sure he is a poet because his tie is uneven
and his hair is so long. Why do literary men wear their hair long, and
literary women wear it short. I should _like_ the poet."

"You shall not have him," said Hugh, with decision. "I am hesitating
between the bald young man with the fat hand and the immense ring and
the old professor who is drawing plans on the table-cloth."

"The apostle told me with bated breath that the young man with the ring
is Mr. Harvey, the author of _Unashamed_."

Hugh looked at his plate to conceal his disgust.

There was a pause in the buzz of conversation, and into it fell
straightway the voice of the a