Thus encouraged, Beresford roused himself to demonstrate the difference between sympathy with German atrocities and antagonism to war and the system of government which made it possible. I, who have heard him for a moment haranguing street loafers and have myself engaged in ding-dong argument with him, little thought to see him so completely routed by the sonorous enquiries of Lady Maitland, who put a question, announced parenthetically that she was a woman with no nonsense about her and flung out a second question before he could answer the first. Deganway stood polishing his eyeglass and murmuring sagaciously "Yes! Yes! That's what our good pacifists never condescend to explain." Pentyre lit a cigarette and confessed to hunger. Two more young officers, whose names I never heard and whom I have never met again, drifted in with a "Sonia not down yet?" and also lit cigarettes. I was glad when Mrs. O'Rane arrived to end Beresford's agony.
Without a word of apology for her lateness, she fluttered like a butterfly into our midst, brushed Lady Maitland's cheek with her lips and pirouetted slowly on her toes like a ballet-dancer.
"How d'you like my new dress, children?" she enquired. "Say you do or you don't, but please don't try to find reasons, or you're sure to go wrong. Peter's the only one here who knows anything about colour, Lady Maitland, and everything I wear has to meet with his approval."
She stopped her pirouetting in front of his sofa and stood, panting slightly and with shining eyes, holding her skirt out on either side and courtesying low. Beresford appraised it slowly, his head on one side, fingering the stuff and taking in every detail from the gold and silver band round her hair to the silk stockings and gilt slippers. An embarrassed maid awaited her opportunity of announcing dinner, Mrs. O'Rane threw her head back and smiled at me over her shoulder, with parted lips.
"Someone appreciates me," she laughed. For the first time I realised what her young and not very sinful vanity must miss by never being able to hear a word of pride or praise from her husband. Sonia O'Rane always reminded me of a child who cannot build a castle in the sand without dragging someone by the wrist to come and admire it. "I don't think you did that night at Colonel Grayle's," she said to me. "In fact it was very forgiving of me to ask you. I've never been so found fault with by anyone except David, and he's given it up since we married. I sometimes wonder whether it is because he thinks I'm perfect or only not worth bothering about now he's got me."
"I only recall saying that you talked a great deal of nonsense," I put in. "I stand by that."
"Well, that's a nice thing to say when I'd refused three invitations from people who were just dying to hear me talk. However, I suppose I'm a cultivated taste."
"And you only invited me in the hope of making me retract," I added.
"Let's have some dinner," she suggested, avoiding my challenge.