Burnet nodded and then he went on and his friend walked down the room, no one but himself knowing that he was making his way into the lion’s (or, rather, lioness’s) den.
And then he paused there beside her. Oh! she Was seven million times lovelier close to than far away. All the rot about Venus and statues and paintings and Helen of Troy was nowhere beside Her and he felt his strength come surging mightily upward and then—oh Heavens!
She looked up—looked so sweetly up—right into his eyes and smiled.
“I expect you are to take me into dinner,” she said; and at her words the man who had been talking to her murmured something meaningless and got out of their way.
“I believe so,” he said.
She rose and he noticed that the top of her head was just level with his coat lapel. He wondered, with a miserable pang, where she came to on her husband’s coat and with the wonder his surging strength surged suddenly out to sea again and left him feeling like Samson when he awoke to the realization of his haircut.
“Dinner’s very late,” she said, quite as if life presented no problem whatever; “you see, it’s the first big company in the house. We were only seventeen last night, and to-night we’re forty-five. It makes a difference.”
“I can imagine so,” he said. He was suddenly acutely aware of feeling very awkward, and of finding her different—quite different from what she had seemed up in her brother’s room.
“What is it?” she asked after a minute, looking up at him; and then she showed that she was conscious of the change, for she added: “Something has happened; Bob has been saying mean things about me to you?”
“Yes, he did tell me something,” he admitted; and just then the butler announced dinner.