"This quaint English custom!" he said lightly. "All you women go into another room to gossip and we men are condemned to the society of one another! I'm afraid even I'm not British enough to appreciate such a droll arrangement. Especially this evening."
Nan passed out in the wake of the other women to while away in desultory small talk that awkward after-dinner interval which splits the evening into halves and involves a picking up of the threads—not always successfully accomplished—when the men at last rejoin the feminine portion of the party. And what is it, after all, but a barbarous relic of those times when a man must needs drink so much wine as to render himself unfit for the company of his womenkind?
"Well," demanded Kitty, "how do you like my lion?"
"Mr. Mallory? I didn't know he was a lion," responded Nan.
"Of course you didn't. You musicians never realise that the human Zoo boasts any other lions but yourselves."
Nan laughed.
"He didn't roar," she said apologetically, "so how could I know? You never told me about him."
"Well, he's just written what everyone says will be the book of the year—Lindley's Wife. It's made a tremendous hit."
"I thought that was by G. A. Petersen?"
"But Peter is G. A. Petersen. Only his intimate friends know it, though, as he detests publicity. So go don't give the fact away."