arbuck's awful wing, while
the outrageous Binky wandered conspicuously and somewhat
mysteriously under hers. She was attentive to the small man and
peeled his peaches for him, while the large man, smiling largely and
with irrepressible affection, peeled hers. The large man (flagrantly
opulent) had ordered peaches. He supposed they'd be the one thing
that durned hotel hadn't got.

Thesiger conceived a violent hatred for him and for the small man,
too. He always had hated the male of the American species. He looked
on him as a disagreeable and alien creature; at his best a creature
of predatory instincts who appropriated and monopolized all those
things of power and beauty that belonged, properly speaking, to his
betters; at his worst a defiler of the sacred wells, a murderer and
mutilator of the language, of his, Oscar Thesiger's, language.

The two were murdering it now, the large man with a terrible slow
assurance in the operation; the small man, as it were, worrying it
between his teeth, disposing of it in little savage snaps and jerks
and nasal snarlings. He would stop eating to do it. That was when
his beautiful and hypothetical companion left him to himself.

For the lady had a curiously soothing and subduing effect on the
small man. Sometimes, when his snarls were too obtrusive, she would
put out her hand, her small, perfect hand, and touch his sleeve, and
he would cease snarling and begin to peck feebly at the things
before him, or at the things before her, as the case might be.
Thesiger actually saw her transferring the _entree_ she had just
tasted from her own plate to his; he heard her coaxing and cajoling
him, calling on him by his offensive name of Binky. "Eat, little
Binky! Little Binky, eat!"

There seemed to be some rule in a game they had, by which, if she
first touched or tasted anything, Binky could not honorably refuse
it.

It was clear that she had a hold on the small man. Thesiger had
noticed that when she cancelled his orders for drinks he made no
resistance, while he bitterly resented Mr. Tarbuck's efforts at
control. She would then inquire gaily of Mr. Tarbuck whether he was
in command of this expedition or was she?

To-night, her fine eyes being considerably occupied with Thesiger,
the small man asserted his independence and was served,
surreptitiously as it were, with a brimming whisky and soda.

He had got his hand on it when the lady shot out a sudden arm across
the table, and with