A great bronze lamp cast abundant light on the table, which was covered with the brightness of silver and crystal. White-gloved servants, as silent as apparitions, changed the plates adorned with painted and gilded monograms; with bottles in their hands they inquired about the kind of wine which they were to pour out; they served dishes from which came the excellent odor of truffles, pickles, rare meat, and vegetables. A number of wall-lamps, placed high, lighted the sides of the dining-hall, which was decked with pictures in brightly shining frames, and with festoons of heavy curtains at the doors and windows. When it left America, the conversation, carried on in French and English, turned to European capitals and to the various phenomena of life in them. English was spoken out of regard for Miss Mary, but French sometimes, for Darvid and his wife preferred that language to English. Irene and Cara might have been considered as genuine English. The ready and accurate English; the pure Parisian French; the varied information, in an atmosphere of light falling from above on a table glittering with costly plate; the order and the dignified ornaments of the great hall; the grand scale of living seemed undoubted high life. There was a moment in which Darvid cast his glance around and threw back his head somewhat; his forehead freed itself from wrinkles—smooth, clever, shining somewhat at the temples—it seemed to be carved out of ivory. His nostrils, delicate and nervous, expanded and contracted, as if inhaling, with the odor of wines and delicacies, the more subtle and intoxicating odor of his own greatness. But this lasted only a short time; soon certain pebbles of seriousness and breaths of distraction began to interrupt his conversation and to dull his clear thought. Balancing in two fingers a dessert knife, he said to Miss Mary:
"I respect your countrymen greatly for their practical sense and sound reason. That's a people—that's a people—"
He stammered somewhat now—a thing which, in his low and fluent speech, never happened. He was thinking of something else.
"That is the nation which said to itself: 'Time is money,' which also—"
Again he faltered. His eyes, attracted by an invincible power, turned continually toward that point of the table where black jets glittered richly and gloomily, and then his lips finished the judgment which he had begun:
"Which also possesses to-day the greatest money-power."
Here Maryan spoke for the first time:
"Not only money; England now leads the newest tendencies in art."
This was spoken at the edges of his lips, without cooperation of other parts of his face, which continued fixed; and on Darvid's lips appeared his smile, of which people said that it bristled with pins.
"The newest tendencies of art!" repeated he, and the words hissed in his mouth somewhat. "Art is something splendid, but the pity is that it is turned into a plaything by wrongly reared children!"