"This is absolutely shocking!" cried Miss Van Tromp. "I shall never marry."
"Let us change the subject," I suggested, suppressing a shudder as Jones glided past me. "We have become a horrible warning to our two unmarried guests--ah--Reginald."
"I am not easily frightened, Mrs. Stevens," the poet dared to say, looking at me courageously.
"Discretion is the better part of bachelorhood," I retorted, and Van Romeo collapsed at once.
"I am so excited at the prospect of meeting Yamama," said Mrs. Edgerton, presently. "He says such wonderful things!"
"And does 'em, too," I murmured, under my breath, and flashing a glance at my smiling face across the table.
"What does he say?" asked Miss Van Tromp, with youthful curiosity.
"Oh, I can't begin to tell you," protested Mrs. Edgerton, and then began: "He says that poetry suffices; that he cannot understand why prose was invented."
"Hear! hear!" cried little Van Tromp, with enthusiasm.
"He abhors egotism. Intellectual self-satisfaction is hideous, he says."