"Let us go back to the fire," he said. "Unless you are really afraid of the heat. Let us hear what your mother and Heath are talking about."
"I'm not afraid of anything except a Te Deum."
"There's Mrs. Shiffney speaking to him. I don't think we shall have it to-night."
"Then I'll venture to draw near," said Charmian, again assuming a semblance of awe.
The minx was evidently uppermost in her as they approached the others. She walked with a dainty slowness, a composed consciousness, that were almost the least bit affected, and as she stood still for a minute close to her mother, with her long eyes half shut, she looked typically of the world worldly, languid, almost prettily disdainful.
Mrs. Shiffney was speaking of the concert of that afternoon with discrimination and with enthusiasm.
"Of course he's a little monkey," she concluded, evidently alluding to some artist. "But what a little monkey! I was in the front row, and he called my attention to everything he was going to do, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in dreadful French, or in English that was really a criminal offense, and very often with his right elbow. He has a way of nudging the air in one's direction so that one feels it in one's side. Animal magnetism, I suppose. And he begs for sympathy as if it were a biscuit. Do you know him, Mr. Heath?"
"No, not at all. I know very few big artists."
"But all the young coming ones, I suppose? Did you study abroad?"