looked really expressive, of surprise and disgust.

"Oh, I can't think so!" he said.

"Yes, yes, she would. She doesn't care honestly for art-loving men. Her
idea of a real man, the sort of man a woman marries, or bolts with, or
goes off her head for, is a huge mass of bones and muscles and thews and
sinews that knows not beauty. And your son would adore her, Sir Donald.
Better not let him, though. Holme's a jealous devil."

"Totally without reason," said Pierce, with a touch of bitterness.

"No doubt. It's part of his Grand Turk nature. He ought to possess
a Yildiz. He's out of place in London where marital jealousy is more
unfashionable than pegtop trousers."

He buried himself in his glass. Sir Donald rose to go.

"I hope I may see you again," he said rather tentatively at parting. "I
am to be found in the Albany."

They both said they would call, and he slipped away gently.

"There's a sensitive man," said Carey when he had gone. "A sort of male
Lady Cardington. Both of them are morbidly conscious of their age and
carry it about with them as if it were a crime. Yet they're both worth
knowing. People with that temperament who don't use hair-dye must have
grit. His son's awful."

"And his poems?"

"Very crude, very faulty, very shy, but the real thing. But he'll never
publish anything again. It must have been torture to him to reveal as
much as he did in that book. He must find others to express him, and
such as him, to the world."

"Lady Holmes?"

"_Par exemple_. Deuced odd that while the dumb understand the whole
show the person who's describing it quite accurately to them often knows
nothing about it. Paradox, irony, blasted eternal cussedness of life!
Did you ever know Lady Ulford?"

"No."

"She was a horse-dealer's daughter."

"Rupert!"

"On my honour! One of those women who are all shirt and collar and
nattiness, with a gold fox for a tie-pin and a hunting-crop under the
arm. She was killed schooling a horse in Mexico after making Ulford shy
and uncomfortable for fifteen years. Lady Cardington and a Texas cowboy
would have been as well suited to one another. Ulford's been like a
wistful ghost, they tell me, ever since her death. I should like to see
him and his son together."

A hard and almost vicious gleam shone for as instant in his eyes.

"You're as cruel as a Spaniard at a bull-fight."

"My boy, I've been gored by the bull."

Pierce was silent for a minute. He thought of Lady Holm