e in
evasions. "Oh, I've glanced at reviews of his plays; seen his face in
illustrated papers. One gets an idea of a man's personality and the kind
of thing he's likely to write."

"A great artist," Madame von Marwitz mildly suggested. "One of our
greatest."

"Is he really? I'd hardly grasped that. I had an idea that he was merely
one of the clever lot. But I never can see why one should put oneself,
through a man's art, into contact with the sort of person one would
avoid having anything to do with in life."

Madame von Marwitz listened attentively. "Do you refuse to look at a
Cellini bronze?"

"Literature is different, isn't it? It's more personal. There's more
life in it. If a man's a low fellow I don't interest myself in his
interpretation of life. He's seen nothing that I'm likely to want to
see."

Madame von Marwitz smiled, now with a touch of irony. "But you frighten
me. How am I to tell you that I know M. Saumier?"

Gregory was decidedly taken back. "That's a penalty you have to pay for
being a celebrity, no doubt," he said. "All celebrities know each other,
I suppose."

"By no means. I allow no one to be thrust upon me, I assure you. And I
have the greatest admiration for M. Saumier's talent. A great artist
cannot be a low fellow; if he were one he would be so much more than
that that the social defect would be negligible. Few great artists, I
imagine, have been of such a character as would win the approval of a
garden party at Lambeth Palace. I am sorry, indeed sorry, that you and
Karen missed _La Gaine d'Or_. It is not a play for the _jeune fille_;
no; though, holding as I do that nothing so fortifies and arms the taste
as liberty, I should have allowed Karen to see it even before her
marriage. It is a play cruel and acrid and beautiful. Yes; there is
great beauty, and it flowers, as so often, on a bitter root. Ah, well,
you will waive your scruples now, I trust. I will take Karen with me to
see it when we are next in Paris together, and that must be soon. We
will go for a night or two. You would like to see Paris with me again;
_pas vrai, cherie?_"

Gregory had been uncomfortably aware of Karen's contemplation while he
defended his prejudices, and he was prepared for an open espousal of her
guardian's point of view; it was, he knew, her own. But he received once
more, as he had received already on several occasions, an unexpected and
gratifying proof of Karen's recognition of marital responsibilit