"Ah, my dear young man," said Countess Eleanor, "we are all common when we fall in love. You will find yourself being common too, some day. And the people who are least bourgeois become the most common of all. Nadine, for instance: there is no one less bourgeoise than Nadine, but if she ever falls in love she will be so common that she will be perfectly sublime. She will be the embodiment of humanity. But she is not in love with that great boy next her, who is so clearly in love with her. Dear me, what beautiful Sèvres dessert plates. I once collected Sèvres as well as snuff-boxes."
"Did you—did you get together a fine collection?" asked Seymour.
"Pretty well. It is easier to get snuff-boxes. My brother has some that used to be mine.—Ah, they are all getting up. Let me come to see your jade some other day."
Nadine and Esther escaped very soon after dinner from this dreadful party, and went to Seymour's flat where he had preceded them and was busy cooking with Antoinette in the kitchen when they arrived. He opened the door for them himself with his shirt sleeves rolled up above his elbows, showing an extremely white and delicate skin. Round one wrist he wore a gold bangle.
"I've left the kitchen door open," he said, "so that the whole flat shall smell as strong as possible of cooking. There is nothing so delicious when you are hungry. We will open the windows afterwards. You and Esther must amuse yourselves for ten minutes, and then supper will be ready."
"Oh, may I come and cook too, Seymour?" asked Nadine.
"Certainly not. Antoinette is the only woman in the world who knows how to cook. You would make everything messy. Go and rock the cradle or rule the world, or whatever you consider to be a woman's sphere, until we are ready."
Seymour disappeared again into the kitchen from which came rich cracklings and odors of frying, and Nadine turned to Esther with a sigh.
"My dear, I have got remorse and world yearnings to-night," she said. "I attribute it to your mother's awful party. But I daresay we shall all be better soon. You know, if I had asked Hugh to let me come and cook, he would have given me a golden spoon to stir with, and eaten till he burst because I cooked it. And I don't care! He was so dear and so utterly impossible this evening. I told him I wasn't going to the dance at the Embassy, and he said he should go in case I changed my mind. And if it had been Hugh cooking in there, I should have gone and cooked too, even if he hadn't wanted me to. It's no use, Esther: I can't marry Hugh. There's the end of it. Up till to-night I have always wondered if I could. Now I know I can't. I think I shan't see so much of him. I shall miss him, don't think I shan't miss him, but I want to be fair to him. As it is now, whenever I am nice to him, which I always am, he thinks it means that I am beginning to love him. Whereas it doesn't mean anything whatever. I wish people hadn't got into the habit of marrying each other, but bought their babies at a shop instead. And kissing is so disgusting. The only person I ever like kissing is Mama, because her skin is so delicious and smells very faintly of raspberries. Hugh smells of cigarettes and soap—"