"Are you thirsty?"
"Parched! I confess I am. I have just escaped from the dead level of dry conventionality. That arid desert: the Sahara of Society. Its womenkind are my abomination."
She looked a little annoyed. As if not appreciating his description.
"I have heard it rumoured, Mr. Masters, that you fly from London to escape Society's attentions."
"And for once the many-tongued is not a lying jade. I suppose all of us, every man and woman, are more or less eccentric."
"Put it that we, most of us, have bees in our bonnets."
"Precisely. The buzzing of my particular insect is the artificial life of modern Society. I just loathe it; never go out for that reason. Fly from London? Yes; I own up; I do. As fast as an express can wing me. Fly to escape the inanities with which the cup of social life is overflowing."
"Balls, parties——"
"And things of that sort are my pet horrors."
She smiled at the expression of his disgust; his manner of expressing it; said: