splay, and knew everyone she cared to know, without having
the vaguest idea who was, or was not, included in "the smart set."
Having been brought up among lions, she had never hunted a lion in her
life, though she had occasionally pulled the ears of one, or stroked its
nose. She had been, and was, the intimate friend of many men and women
who were "doing things" in the world. But she had never felt within
herself the power to create anything original, and was far too
intelligent, far too aristocratic in mind, to struggle impotently to be
what she was not meant to be, or to fight against her own clearly seen
limitations.

Unlike Mrs. Mansfield in this respect Charmian struggled, and her mother
knew it.

On the following evening, when Charmian and her mother were dining
together before going to Max Elliot's, she said rather abruptly:

"Why didn't Mr. Elliot invite us to dinner to-night, do you think?"

"Why should he have invited us?"

"Well, perhaps it wasn't necessary. But surely it would have been quite
natural."

"Probably he wanted to prepare the new note for you."

"Why should I require preparation?"

"The new note!"

"Why should the new note require preparation against me?"

"I said for you. Possibly we may find out this evening. Besides Delia is
in a rest cure as usual. So there is no hostess."

Delia was Max Elliot's wife, a graceful nonentity who, having never done
a stroke of work in her life, was perpetually breaking down, and being
obliged to rest expensively under the supervision of fashionable
doctors. She was now in Hampstead, enclosed in a pale green chamber,
living on milk and a preparation called "Marella," and enjoying
injections of salt water. She was also being massaged perpetually by a
stout young woman from Sweden, and was deprived of her letters. "No
letters!" was a prescription which had made her physician celebrated.

"Oh, the peace of it!" Mrs. Elliot was faintly murmuring to the athletic
masseuse, at the very moment when Charmian said:

"There very seldom is a hostess. Poor Max Elliot!"

"He's accustomed to it. And Delia must be doing something. This time she
may be cured. Life originally issued from the sea, they say."

"Near Margate, I suppose. What a mystery existence is!"

"Are you going to be tiresome to-night?"

"No, I won't, I won't. But if he plays his Te Deum I know I shall sleep
like a tired child."

"I don't suppose he will."

"I feel he's going to."

"Then