Murrel smiled grimly. The fashion was in full blast now. He recognised all the signs of that change in the social weather; that altered atmosphere around the Syndicalist. He even heard the familiar sound that put the final touch to it; the murmuring voice of Lady Boole, “. . . any Thursday. We shall be so pleased.”
Murrel, still smiling grimly, turned on his heel and crossed over to the corner where Olive Ashley was sitting. He noted that she sat watching with compressed lips and that her dark eyes were dangerously bright. He addressed her upon a note of delicate condolence.
“Afraid our practical joke has rather turned bottom up,” he said. “We meant him to be a bear and he’s going to be a lion.”
She looked up and suddenly smiled in a dazzling and highly baffling manner.
“He did knock them about like ninepins, didn’t he?” she cried, “and he wasn’t a bit afraid of old Eden.”
Murrel stared down at her with an entirely new perplexity on his dolorous visage.
“This is very odd,” he said. “Why, you seem to be quite proud of your protege. ”
He continued to stare at her undecipherable smile and at last he said: “Well, I don’t understand women; nobody ever will, and it is obviously dangerous to try. But if I may make a mere guess on the subject, my dear Olive, I have a growing suspicion that you are a little humbug.”
He departed with his usual gloomy good humour; and the party was already breaking up. As the last of the visitors left, he stood once more for a moment in the gateway leading into the garden and sent a Parthian arrow.
“I don’t understand women,” he said, “but I do know a little about men. And now I’m going to take charge of your performing bear.”