laughed one
could see her tongue; it was like an inner cut of water-melon, and
sometimes, when she was silent, the point of it caressed her under lip.
Her skin was of that quality which artificial light makes radiant, and
yet of which the real delicacy is only apparent by day. She just lacked
being tall, and in her face and about her bare arms and neck was the
perfume of health. She moved indolently, with a grace of her own. She
was not yet twenty, a festival of beauty in the festival of life.

At the rustle of her dress Tristrem had arisen. As the girl crossed the
room he bethought him of a garden of lilies; though why, for the life of
him, he could not have explained. He heard his name mentioned, and saw
the girl incline her head, but he made little, if any, acknowledgment;
he stood quite still, looking at her and through her, and over her and
beyond. For some moments he neither moved nor spoke. He was unconscious
even that other guests had come.

He gave his hand absently to a popular novelist, Mr. A. B. Fenwick
Chisholm-Jones by name, more familiarly known as Alphabet, whom Weldon
brought to him, and kept his eyes on the yellow bodice. A fair young
woman in pink had taken a position near to where he stood, and was
complaining to someone that she had been obliged to give up cigarettes.
And when the someone asked whether the abandonment of that pleasure was
due to parental interference, the young woman laughed shortly, and
explained that she was in training for a tennis tournament. Meanwhile
the little group in which Tristrem stood was re-enforced by a new-comer,
who attempted to condole with the novelist on the subject of an
excoriating attack that one of the critics had recently made on his
books, and suggested that he ought to do something about it. But of
condolence or advice Mr. Jones would have none.

"Bah!" he exclaimed, "if the beggar doesn't like what I write let him
try and do better. I don't care what any of them say. My books sell, and
that's the _hauptsache_. Besides, what's the use in arguing with a
newspaper? It's like talking metaphysics to a bull; the first you know,
you get a horn in your navel." And while the novelist was expressing his
disdain of all adverse criticism, and quoting Emerson to the effect that
the average reviewer had the eyes of a bug and the heart of a cat,
Tristrem discovered Mrs. Weldon's arm in his own, and presently found
himself seated next to her at table.

At the extreme