Lady Locke and Lord Reggie sat down silently. A few yards away Mrs. Windsor, Madame Valtesi, and Mr. Smith formed a heterogeneous and singularly inappropriate group. Through the lighted windows of the drawing-room a multitude of bobbing small heads might be discerned, and the large form of Esmé Amarinth in the act of reciting the words of his catch.
Lord Reggie looked at Lady Locke, and sighed softly.
"Why are beautiful things so sad?" he said. "This night is like some exquisite dark youth full of sorrow. If you listen, you can hear the murmur of his grief in the wind. It is as if he had shed tears, and known renunciations."
"We all know renunciations," she answered. "And they are sad, but they are great too. We are often greatest when we give something up."
"I think renunciations are foolish," he said. "I only once gave up a pleasure, and the remembrance of it has haunted me like a grey ghost ever since. Why do people think it an act of holiness to starve their souls? We are here to express ourselves, not to fast twice in a week. Yet how few men and women ever dare to express themselves fully?"
Lady Locke looked up, and seemed to come to a sudden resolution.
"Do you ever express your real self by what you say or do?" she asked.
"Yes, always nearly."
"Even by wearing that green carnation?"
There was a ring of earnestness in her voice that evidently surprised him a little.