"Why didn't you go?" Kendal asked, without any appreciable show of curiosity. If he had been looking closely enough he would have seen that she was waiting for his question.
"Oh, it lies somehow, that sort of thing, outside my idea of life. I have nothing to say to it, and it has nothing to say to me."
Kendal smiled introspectively. He saw why he had been shown the letter. "And yet," he said, "I venture to hope that if we had met there we might have had some little conversation."
Elfrida leaned back in her chair and threw up her head, locking her slender fingers over her knee. "Of coarse," she said indifferently. "I understand why you should go. You must. You have arrived at a point where the public claims a share of your personality. That's different."
Kendal's face straightened out. He was too much of an Englishman to understand that a personally agreeable truth might not be flattery, and Elfrida never knew how far he resented her candor when it took the liberty of being gracious.
"I went in the humble hope of getting a good supper and seeing some interesting people," he told her. "Loti was there, and Madame Rives-Chanler, and Sargent."
"And the supper?" Miss Bell inquired, with a touch of sarcasm.
"Disappointing," he returned seriously. "I should say bad—as bad as possible." She gave him an impatient glance.
"But those people—Loti and the rest—it is only a serio-comic game to them to go the Princess Bobaloffs. They wouldn't if they could help it They don't live their real lives in such places—among such people!"
Kendal took the cigarette from his mouth and laughed. "Your Bohemianism is quite Arcadian in its quality —deliriously fresh," he declared. "I think they do. Genius clings to respectability after a time. A most worthy and amiable lady, the Princess."