Elsie April said nothing. And as she said nothing he was obliged to say something, if only to prove to both of them that he was not a mere tongue-tied provincial. He said:
"You know I feel awfully out of it here in this Society of yours!"
"Out of it?" she exclaimed, and her voice thrilled as she resented his self-depreciation.
"It's over my head—right over it!"
"Now, Mr. Machin," she said, dropping somewhat that rich low voice, "I quite understand that there are some things about the Society you don't like, trifles that you're inclined to laugh at. I know that. Many of us know it. But it can't be helped in an organization like ours. It's even essential. Don't be too hard on us. Don't be sarcastic."
"But I'm not sarcastic!" he protested.
"Honest?" She turned to him quickly. He could descry her face in the gloom, and the forward bend of her shoulders, and the backward sweep of her arms resting on the seat, and the straight droop of her Egyptian shawl from her inclined body.
"Honest!" he solemnly insisted.
The exchange of this single word was so intimate that it shifted their conversation to a different level—level at which each seemed to be assuring the other that intercourse between them could never be aught but utterly sincere thenceforward, and that indeed in future they would constitute a little society of their own, ideal in its organization.
"Then you're too modest," she said decidedly. "There was no one here to-night who's more respected than you are. No one! Immediately I first spoke to you—I daresay you don't remember that afternoon at the Grand Babylon Hotel!—I knew you weren't like the rest. And don't I know them? Don't I know them?"