re----"

"Is it anything _important_?" he interrupted curtly.

"It's very important that you should listen _most_ politely and
carefully and patiently and attentively when I'm talking to you. So far
you haven't asked how I am, you haven't told me how you are----"

"I've _suggested_ that I'm very busy," he interrupted her again.

"But I don't allow that sort of thing to stand in the way."

"And _I_ don't allow any one to break into my time. Good-bye----"

"Eric, don't you dare ring me off! I want to know whether you'll lunch
here to-day. I've collected rather an amusing party."

"I'm afraid I can't."

"Where _are_ you lunching? At home? Then you can certainly come. . . . I
don't care _who's_ lunching with you. . . . If you don't--Well, you'll
see. In the meantime, has Marion Shelley invited you to dine to-night
and are you going?"

"Yes, to the first; no, to the second," Eric answered. "Lady
Barbara----"

"It must be 'yes' to the second, too, dear Eric. I rang her up at
cock-crow to say that you wanted her to invite us together. You do, you
know; you want to see whether last night's impression was true; that's
why I asked you to lunch. . . . Now I want to know if you've a rehearsal
to-day, because, if so----"

"Lady Barbara, I am going to cut you off," said Eric distinctly.

He hung up the receiver and was about to ring for his secretary, when
his memory was arrested by the picture of Barbara springing to her feet,
reviling him, collapsing on the sofa and bursting into tears. "Bully
her, and she cries," he murmured impatiently. "Don't bully her, and she
bullies you. I'm not cut out for the part of tame cat. Another
forty-eight hours, and she'll expect me to drive round London and look
at dresses with her. . . ." But if his petulance had made her cry again
. . . Eric hunted for a pen and, without involving himself in delicacies
of address, wrote--"_I am not discourteous by preference, but you drive
me to it. La comedia e finita._" He left the note unsigned and asked his
secretary to have it sent by hand to Berkeley Square. When it had left
him past recall, he felt that he could have done better; and he knew
that he would have done best of all by not writing. . . . But he was
irritated by her too insistent unconventionality; irritated and yet
rawly elated by his ascendancy over her.

His secretary returned, and he dictated to her until half-past nine
struck. It was his signal to get up so that he could be dr