And they both laughed.
From which entirely foolish conversation it may be gathered that between our Fortunate Youth and the Princess some genial sun had melted the icy barriers of formality. He had known her for eighteen months, ever since she had bought Chetwood Park and settled down as the great personage of the countryside. He had met her many times, both in London and in Morebury; he had dined in state at her house; he had shot her partridges; he had danced with her; he had sat out dances with her, notably on one recent June night, in a London garden, where they lost themselves for an hour in the discussion of the relative parts that love played in a woman's life and in a man's. The Princess was French, ancien regime, of the blood of the Coligny, and she had married, in the French practical way, the Prince Zobraska, in whose career the only satisfactory incident history has to relate is the mere fact of his early demise. The details are less exhilarating. The poor little Princess, happily widowed at one-and-twenty, had shivered the idea of love out of her system for some years. Then, as is the way of woman, she regained her curiosities. Great lady, of enormous fortune, she could have satisfied them, had she so chosen, with the large cynicism of a Catherine of Russia. She could also, had she so chosen, have married one of a hundred sighing and decorous gentlemen; but with none of them had she fallen ever so little in love, and without love she determined to try no more experiments; her determination, however, did not involve surrender of interest in the subject. Hence the notable discussion on the June night. Hence, perhaps, after a few other meetings of a formal character, the prettily intimate invitation she had sent to Paul.
They were still laughing at the turn of the foolish conversation when the other guests began to enter the drawing-room. First came Edward Doon, the Egyptologist, a good-looking man of forty, having the air of a spruce don, with a pretty young wife, Lady Angela Doon; then Count Lavretsky, of the Russian Embassy, and Countess Lavretsky; Lord Bantry, a young Irish peer with literary ambitions; and a Mademoiselle de Cressy, a convent intimate of the Princess and her paid companion, completed the small party.
Dinner was served at a round table, and Paul found himself between Lady Angela Doon, whom he took in, and the Countess Lavretsky. Talk was general and amusing. As Doon did not make, and apparently did not expect anyone to make any reference to King Qa or Amenhotep or Rameses—names vaguely floating in Paul's brain—but talked in a sprightly way about the French stage and the beauty of Norwegian fiords, Paul perceived that the Princess's alleged reason for her invitation was but a shallow pretext. Doon did not need any entertainment at all. Lady Angela, however, spoke of her dismay at the prospect of another winter in the desert; and drew a graphic little sketch of the personal discomforts to which Egyptologists were subjected.
"I always thought Egyptologists and suchlike learned folk were stuffy and snuffy with goggles and ragged old beards," laughed Paul. "Your husband is a revelation."
"Yes, he's quite human, isn't he?" she said with an affectionate glance across the table. "He's dead keen on his work, but he realizes—as many of his stuffy and snuffy confreres don't—that there's a jolly, vibrating, fascinating, modern world in which one lives."
"I'm glad to hear you say that about the modern world," said Paul.
"What is Lady Angela saying about the modern world?" asked the Princess, separated from Paul's partner only by Count Lavretsky.
"Singing paeans in praise of it," said Paul.
"What is there in it so much to rejoice at?" asked the diplomatist, in a harsh voice. He was a man prematurely old, and looked at the world from beneath heavy, lizard-like eyelids.