"Oh! I wish it were!" said Miss Tarlton.
"I'm afraid it may be before many days are over," said Pateley. "I never saw anything so perfect. And do you know, it takes a snapshot in a room even just as well as in the open air. If I had it in my hand I could snap any one of you here, at this moment, almost without your knowing anything about it."
"I am so glad you haven't," Lady Gore couldn't help ejaculating.
"The man who was showing it took one of me as I turned to look at it. It is perfectly wonderful."
"And that in a room?" Miss Tarlton said, more and more awestruck. "And simply a snapshot, not a time exposure at all?"
"Precisely," Pateley said.
"I shall go and see it," Miss Tarlton said, and, notebook in hand, she continued with a businesslike air to write down the particulars communicated by Pateley.
"I am quite out of my depth," Lady Gore said to Wentworth. "What does a 'time exposure' mean?"
"Heaven knows," said Wentworth. "Something about seconds and things, I suppose."
"I can never judge of how many seconds a thing takes," said Lady Gore.