For the moment he felt vaguely irritated because Miss Fairfax—a seemingly unpretentious and socially unimportant elderly female—refused to admit that there was not a single modern English prose writer that could compare with Proust. To the general's direct challenge he only replied drily.
"Very brilliant indeed, my good Naniescu; but, you know, I have seen so much in my day that sights like these have no longer the power to stir me."
"I am sorry for you," Miss Fairfax retorted with old-maidish bluntness. "I have been about the world a good deal myself, but I find it always a pleasure to look at pretty people. Look at Rosemary Fowkes now," she went on, addressing no one in particular, "did you ever in all your life see anything so beautiful?"
She made lively little gestures of greeting, and pointed to a couple on the dancing-floor below. Lady Orange turned her perpetually surprised gaze in that direction, and General Naniescu uttered an exaggerated cry of admiration. Even M. de Kervoisin appeared interested.
"Who is the lady?" he asked.
"She is Rosemary Fowkes," Miss Fairfax said, "one of the most distinguished——"
"Ah! I entreat you, mademoiselle, tell us no more," the general exclaimed with mock protest; "a lovely woman needs no other label but her own loveliness. She is distinguished amongst all because she is beautiful. What else should a woman be when she is the finest work the Creator ever produced—an enchantress?"
"Well," Miss Fairfax rejoined dryly, "I would scold you, general, for those lyrical effusions if they were intended for anybody else. Pretty women are usually silly, because from childhood upwards they have been taught to use their intellect solely for purposes of self-contemplation and self-admiration. But Rosemary Fowkes is an exception. She is not only beautiful, but brilliantly clever. Surely you remember those articles in the International Review on the subject of 'The Evils of Bureaucracy in the Near East'? They were signed 'Uno,' and many doubted at the time that the writer was a woman, and a young one at that."
"Uno?" General Naniescu exclaimed, and threw a significant glance at M. de Kervoisin, who in his turn uttered an astonished "Ah!" and leaned over the edge of the box in order to take a closer view of the lady under discussion.