I hope that I am not unkind to Sheila when I say that she seems to me more attractive when she is either in trouble or ill-health; in her more joyous moods I simply do not belong—and do not want to belong—to her life. A friend of mine once called her a social pirate, and there is no doubt that her method of collecting the people whom she wants is to besiege them until they eventually surrender. Why, however, Bobbie Outram is always asked to her smartest week-ends was a conundrum to me until I met her magnificently convalescing after influenza at Folkestone. For I know Bobbie, and I would run a mile or two any day to avoid him.
Sheila was in a bath-chair, but looked radiantly well, and at once gave me a list of her latest victims.
"They sound all right," I said. "But will Bobbie Outram like them?"
At this she gave a little gurgling laugh and put two fingers on my arm.
"Of course you know Bobbie. I forgot."
"I kicked him at school, I loathed him at Cambridge, and let him know it, and he is still all over me. He brags about you whenever he sees me before I see him."
"He is the greatest success I have ever had," she declared.
"Then Heaven help you," I replied.
"You don't understand; you think it's quite easy to collect——"
"People tell me you tried to found a salon, but only got as far as a Zoo," I interrupted.