"My—ah, Phidias," said he, resisting an irritable desire to correct the lady, "got mislaid to-day. It shan't happen again, I promise you. He's a very busy person just now, though. He hasn't time for social dissipation. I'm the butterfly of the pair." The lady gave a sudden laugh.
"He was busy enough the last time I saw him," she said, crinkling her eyelids. She turned to Miss Benham.
"Do you remember that evening we were going home from the Madrid, and motored round by Montmartre to see the fête?"
"Yes," said Miss Benham, unsmiling, "I remember."
"Your friend, Ste. Marie," said the American lady to Hartley, "was distinctly the lion of the fête—at the moment we arrived, anyhow. He was riding a galloping pig and throwing those paper streamer things—what do you call them?—with both hands, and a genial lady in a blue hat was riding the same pig and helping him out. It was just like the Vie de Bohême and the other books. I found it charming."
Baron de Vries emitted an amused chuckle.
"That was very like Ste. Marie," he said. "Ste. Marie is a very exceptional young man. He can be an angel one moment, a child playing with toys the next, and—well, a rather commonplace social favourite the third. It all comes of being romantic—imaginative. Ste. Marie—I know nothing about this evening of which you speak—but Ste. Marie is quite capable of stopping on his way to a funeral to ride a galloping pig—or on his way to his own wedding.
"And the pleasant part of it is," said Baron de Vries, "that the lad would turn up at either of these two ceremonies not a bit the worse, outside or in, for his ride."
"Ah, now that's an oddly close shot," said Hartley. He paused a moment, looking towards Miss Benham, and said—
"I beg pardon! Were you going to speak?"