“Yes; or at some ‘other fellow’s’ club,” laughed his mother. “Legal institutions, I suppose!”
There was a brief silence; one of those silences which come when one branch of a conversation is felt to be exhausted; and then Loring finished his tea, put down his cup, and settled himself into a comfortable attitude.
“I forget whether you were taken with the Ibsen craze last season, Mrs. Romayne?” he said. “We shall all have to tie wet towels round our heads—it won’t be becoming, I’m afraid—and give ourselves up to solitary meditation, I hear! He is to be the thing this winter, they tell me.”
“Ibsen?” repeated Mrs. Romayne reflectively; obviously searching in her memory for some ideas to attach to the name, which she was as obviously conscious of having heard before. “Ibsen? Oh, yes,” with a sudden flash of inspiration, “oh, yes, of course; that ‘Dolls’ House’ man, that everybody talked of going to see just at the end of the season.”
The first of those startling pictures of human nastiness which have since exercised criticism to so great an extent, and which may or may not be revelations, had taken a wonderful hold upon a certain section of “society,” and had become, as Mrs. Romayne’s words implied, almost the fashion in the preceding June. Society is always inclined to be literary and intellectual, or rather, to an assumption of those qualities, in the winter. It was with a sense of the absolute duty of priming herself beforehand that Mrs. Romayne continued, with every appearance of the deepest interest:
“Ah, no! I’m sorry to say I was never able to spare an evening. Everybody told me all about it, though. It must have been awfully clever and interesting. But, you see, just at that time one has so much on hand! There was that dreadful bazaar, too. By-the-bye, have the Pomeroys come back yet, do you know, Mr. Loring?”
Mr. Loring believed that they had not, and after a little discussion of their probable plans, Mrs. Romayne returned to the subject of Ibsen.
“Are they going to bring out a new play of his, did you say?” she said carelessly.
“So I hear,” answered Loring. “An extraordinary piece of work, with a tremendous theory in it, of course. The idea is the influence of heredity.”
Mrs. Romayne started slightly. A strange flash leapt up in her eyes, and as it died out, quenched as it seemed by iron resolution, it left a curious expression on her face; it was an expression in which a light scorn—the normal attitude of the shallow, fashionable woman towards deep questions of any kind—seemed to be battling indomitably for a place against something which was hardly to be held at bay, by no means to be suppressed.