"You see, I'm interested in things. I particularly love the intellectual atmosphere of this house, and I read all the serious magazines and things, the Bookman and the Saturday Review and the Sketch; and so on."
"Should you say the atmosphere was really so intellectual here?" said Rivers a little doubtfully.
The Viennese Band was playing Caresses in its most Viennese way; people were gaily coming up from supper or coquettishly going down, or sitting in corners à deux, dreamily. The heavy scent of red rosebuds hung over all. So becoming was the background at this particular moment that nearly every woman looked fair and every man brave....
"I'm afraid—I mean, I suppose—you take what they call an intelligent interest in the subjects of the day, Miss Winter?"
"I should think so, indeed!" she answered.
"Oh dear!" Rivers looked depressed as he tried to remember what he knew about Radium and Russia.
"Somehow I don't feel frightened of you," she said. "Will you take me to have a cup of tea?"
He escorted her downstairs, endeavouring to make up for any disappointment she might feel by pointing out with reckless lavishness Mr. Chamberlain, Beerbohm Tree, Arthur Balfour, Madame Melba, Filsen Young, George Alexander, and Winston Churchill, none of whom, by a curious coincidence, happened to be present.
"Surely I may talk to you a moment," Woodville murmured to Sylvia. "Every one's happy eating, and you needn't bother. Just come out, one second—on the verandah through the little room. After all, I'm a friend of the family!"
"Why, so you are!"