"I didn't know how well you knew David," she said. "Of course, he's a delightful, gallant, generous soul—nobody's fonder of him than I am—, but he's so terribly impulsive, don't you know? I really hoped that, when Sonia consented to marry him, she would—well—tame him a little. Dear David will pretend that everybody's like everybody else; well, I don't suppose either of us is a snob, Mr. Stornaway, but there are distinctions, don't you know? We should be called old-fashioned, if we said anything, but some of the people here to-night—of course, Sonia's a wonderful actress, much cleverer than half the professionals you see, so she's got into rather a theatrical set—I suppose that's the modern spirit; Eleanor Ross had a woman lunching with her to-day who six months ago—well, she wouldn't have dared.... But when it comes to turning a private house into a sort of mission-room.... One can carry democracy to excess, don't you know?"
The voice was rising again, and Mrs. O'Rane danced to my side and snatched me away on the plea that Lady Maitland wanted to fix a day for my meeting with Barbara Neave.
"Was darling mother being tiresome?" she asked sympathetically. "The casual-ward stunt, I suppose?"
"What do you feel about it yourself?" I asked her.
"About David's lame ducks? Oh, he has his friends, and I have mine, and it's no one else's business." She looked round the crowded room and then seemed to decide that she had been too brusque. "I don't know—yet, whether it will answer," she went on uncertainly. "David's always been a freak about money, he'd always give anything to anybody. Now he says that he'd be dishonoured, if he took with one hand and refused with the other.... He's rather absurd, poor darling, because he wouldn't need to take anything from anybody, if he hadn't been so frightfully smashed up in the war. And if I don't mind.... It's really rather fun, however mad it may seem. We've all of us gone mad since the War. Except David. You didn't know him, but he's almost sane compared with what he was before." She abandoned her pose of affected insincerity and turned to me with shining eyes. "You do love David, don't you?" she asked.
"My dear lady, I've only met him twice," I said.
"Isn't that more than enough?" Her expression changed restlessly; and I remembered wondering how long she would retain her looks, if she continued to live on her nerves like this. "Too many dam' dull Daintons here, you know. I made certain mother would think this sort of thing too Bohemian. She'd like me to have a prim and proper little house in one of the streets about here and entertain the conventional people in the conventional way—simply wagging my tail if I enticed an Under-Secretary here. Mother'd go miles for an Under-Secretary. Well, it's much more fun inviting the amusing people, the people you like. I am rather a Bohemian, I've always led my own life. I do now. Darling David never tries to make me do anything or stop me doing anything, he never wants to know what I've been doing.... All the same, David's 'duty to one's neighbour' stunt.... Thank goodness! he doesn't expect me to share my clothes with casual visitors!"
She stood with her eyes fixed thoughtfully and without complete comprehension on her husband's thin, mobile face. His own, black and arresting for all their sightlessness, were turned to the rafters and the shadows of the roof, as he sat with head bent back and fingers idly modulating. Then Lady Dainton came forward and took her leave; the party broke up rapidly, and, by the time that I left, only Vincent Grayle remained, talking to his hostess, while Beresford transferred himself to the other end of the room, ostentatiously turning his back and resting his injured leg on the edge of O'Rane's piano stool.