"An effort. What for?"
"To conceal how crudely in love with your wife you are."
He bit his lips and frowned. "Children and fools speak the truth," he murmured. Then he set to work on the champagne and drank much more than was good for him. The wine, however, only affected his appearance. It brought a flush to his pallid cheeks and made his dull eyes sparkle. He deluged me with politics till three o'clock. Then we drove to Park Lane. Lady Helen kept us waiting for twenty minutes. In the meantime, two other callers joined us. Men. In order to show himself at home Hubbard smoked a cigarette. The men looked pensively appalled. They were poets. They wore long hair and exotic gardens in their buttonholes. And they rolled their eyes. They must have been poets. Also they carried bouquets. Certainly they were poets. When Lady Helen entered they surged up to her, uttering little artistic foreign cries. And they kissed her hand. She gave their bouquets to the footman with an air of fascinating disdain. Their dejection was delightful. But she consoled them with a smile and advanced to us. Certainly she had changed. I had known her as a somewhat unconventional and piquant débutante. She was now a brilliant siren, an accomplished coquette and a woman of the world. Her tiny stature made her attractive, for she was perfectly proportioned and her costume ravishingly emphasised the petite and dainty grace of her figure. Her face was reminiscent of one of those wild flowers of torrid regions which resemble nothing grown in an English garden, but which, nevertheless, arrest attention and charm by their bizarrerie. It was full of eerie wisdom, subtle wilfulness and quaint, half-humorous diablerie. In one word, she was a sprite. She greeted her husband with an unctuous affectation of interest which would have made me, in his place, wish to box her ears. Hubbard, however, was as good an actor as herself. He protested he was grateful for the audience and claimed credit for introducing me. Lady Helen looked me up and down and remembered that I had owed her a letter for nearly thirty-seven months. She gave me the tips of her fingers and then rushed away to kiss on both cheeks a lady who had just entered. "Oh, you darling!" she twittered. "This is just too lovely of you. I have longed for you to come."
It was May Ottley. She did not see me at once. Lady Helen utterly engrossed her. I had, therefore, time to recover from the unexpected shock of her appearance. I was ridiculously agitated. I slipped into an alcove and picked up a book of plates. At first my hands shook so that I could hardly turn the pages. Hubbard glided to my side. I felt his smile without seeing it. "I smell a brother idiot," he whispered.
I met his eyes and nodded.
"In Egypt, of course?"
"Yes."
"She marries a guardsman next month, I hear."
"Indeed."
"The poor man," murmured Hubbard. "Come out and let us drink his health."