"Good. It will be just the four of us. Dear Sir Maurice is such a bore, poor darling; I really can't invite him. Now I must go. Shall we say somewhere about eight?"
As she got up, I looked at my watch and found that, for all the excellence of the dinner and the time that we were charged with spending over our wine, it was not yet ten. The Maitlands gave no hint of leaving, nor did Mrs. O'Rane vouchsafe a reason for her early departure. I saw her shaking hands with Grayle and heard him icily asking her to wait while he telephoned for a cab. With equal polite iciness of tone she assured him that she would find one in the Brompton Road. I saw her smiling mischievously to herself, as she walked out of the room; Grayle's smile, on his return, was mysterious, and I surmised that another trial of strength was in progress.
As we stood on the door-step an hour later, I asked him if we were meeting at "The Sanctuary" the following week.
"She said something about it," he answered, "but I shan't go."
"You're too old for this sort of nonsense, Grayle," I told him.
"What sort of nonsense?"
But before I could answer, a taxi crawled invitingly past the door.
4
I have never been able to cope collectedly with a verbal invitation and I am now too old to acquire the art. Otherwise I should have found an excuse for leaving my intimacy with Mrs. O'Rane where it was. I had dined the first time at "The Sanctuary" for the sake of her husband; he interested me, baffled me, refused to let me get to grips with him, and I did not intend to be beaten. His wife, I felt, for all her surface fascination and vitality, was rather a waste of time. And her retinue of fashionable actresses, elderly men about town and Guards subalterns was intellectually too exotic for me. I determined that my second dinner with her should be my last.
The door was unlocked, when I arrived, and Beresford was in undisputed possession of the long, warm library, though several large boxes of chocolates, an earthenware jar of expensive cigarettes, a parcel of books half out of their paper and string and a profusion of hot-house flowers dispelled any rash assumption that Mrs. O'Rane was being neglected by her admirers. And, whilst I waited for her, Beresford told me that the original party of four had multiplied itself by three. After a pause, in which he tried not to seem self-conscious, he asked whether I knew the O'Ranes well and rather wistfully volunteered his opinion that there was no real sympathy between them and that she was unhappy and unappreciated.