Audrey answered primly:
“I haven’t decided. Should you advise me to do so?”
He waved a hand.
“Ah! It depends on the life you wish to lead. Who knows—with a young woman who has all experience behind her and all life before her! But I do hope I may see you again. And I trust I may persuade you to come to my studio again.” Audrey felt the thrill of drama as he proceeded. “This is scarcely a night for you. I ought to tell you that I give three entertainments during the autumn. To-night is the first. It is for students and those English and Americans who think they are seeing Paris here. Then I give another for the political and dramatic worlds. Each is secretly proud to meet the other. The third I reserve to my friends. Some of my many friends in London are good enough to come over specially for it. It is on Christmas Eve. I do wish you would come to that one.”
“I suppose,” she said, catching the diabolic glances of Miss Ingate and Tommy, “I suppose you know almost more people in London than in Paris?”
He answered:
“Well, I count among my friends more than two-thirds of the subscribers to Covent Garden Opera.... By the way, do you happen to be connected with the Moncreiffs of Suddon Wester? They have a charming house in Hyde Park Terrace. But probably you know it?”
Audrey burst out laughing. She laughed loud and violently till the tears stood in her eyes.
“Well,” he said, at a loss, deprecatingly. “Perhaps these Moncreiffs are rather weird.”
“I was only laughing,” she said in gasps, but with a complete secret composure. “Because we had such an awful quarrel with them last year. I couldn’t tell you the details. They’re too shocking.”