The booming of the gong, however, cut short her brooding. They passed to the dining-room. Britomart and Walter sat with their backs to the tall black dresser with the willow pattern stretching up almost to the ceiling; Laura and Edgar took the German chairs that had their backs to the copper-hooded fireplace; and Cosimo and Amory occupied either end of the highly-polished clothless table. This absence of cloth, by the way, gave a church-like appearance to the flames of the candles in the spidery brass sticks that had each of them a ring at the top to lift it up by; the preponderance of black oak and dull black frames on the walls further added to the effect of gloom; and the putting down of the little green pipkins of soup and the moving of the green-handled knives and round-bowled spoons made little knockings from time to time.
Again Walter and Laura, with not too much help from Cosimo, sustained the weight of the conversation; and it was not until Amory asked a question in a tone from which rapture was markedly absent that they sponged, as it were, the priceless memory of Mr. Crabtree from their minds. Amory's question had been about Walter's new Lecture, still in course of preparation, on "Post-Dated Passion"; and Walter cursorily ran over its heads for the general benefit.
"I admit I got the idea from Balzac," he said between mouthfuls (whenever they came to The Witan the Wyrons supped almost as heartily as did Edgar Strong himself). "'Comment l'amour revient aux vieillards,' you know. But of course that hasn't any earthly interest for anybody. 'Aux vieilles' it ought to be. Then—well, then you've simply got 'em."
"Why not 'vieillards?'" Amory asked, not very genially.
"I say, Cosimo, I'll have another cutlet if I may.—Why not 'vieillards?' Quite obvious. Men aren't the interest. I've tried men, and you can ask Laura how the bookings went.—But 'vieilles' and I've got 'em. Really, Amory, you're getting quite dull if you don't see that! I'll explain. You see, I've already got the younger ones, like Brit here—shove the claret along, Brit—but the others, of forty or fifty say, well, they've all had their affairs—or if they haven't better still—and it's merely a question of touching the right chord. Regrets, time they've lost, fatal words 'Too late' and so on—it's simply made for me! Touch the chord and they do the rest for themselves. They probably won't hear half of it for sobbing.—Of course I shall probably have to modify my style a bit—not quite so—what shall I say——"
"Jaunty," his wife suggested, "—in the best sense, I mean——"
"Hm—that's not quite the word—but never mind. It's a great field. Certainly women, not men, are the draw."
Amory made a rather petulant objection, and the argument lasted some minutes. In the end Walter triumphantly gained his first point, that women and not men were the "draw" in the box-office sense, and also his second one, namely, that not the Britomarts, but the older women, who would put their hearts into his hands and pay him for exploiting their helplessness and ache and tenderness and regret, and never suspect that they were being practised upon, were "simply made for him...."
"What do you think of my title?" he asked.
And the title was discussed.