was no mistaking her. The others had not been lacking in vitality before, but she brought in with her a far more abundant measure. She was forty-five, perhaps, but clearly her age was the last thing to be thought about with regard to her. You could as well wonder what was the age of a sunlit wave breaking on the shore, or of a wind that blew from the sea. Everybody sat up at once.

"Mama darling, come here," said Nadine, "and talk to us."

Princess Waldenech looked round her largely and brilliantly.

"I thought I should find you all here," she said. "Nadine dear, of course you know best, but is it usual for a girl to have two young gentlemen lying about with her on one bed? I suppose it must be, since you all do it. Are they all going to bed here? Have they brought their tooth-brushes and nighties? Berts, is that you, Berts? Really one can hardly see[Pg 18] for the smoke, but after all this used to be the smoking-room, and I suppose it has formed the habit. Berts, you fiend, you made me laugh at dinner just when Bishop Spenser was telling me about the crisis of faith he went through when he was a young man so that he nearly became a Buddhist instead of a bishop. Or do Buddhists have bishops, too? Wasn't it dreadful? He's a dear, and he gives all his money away to endow other bishops, both black and white—like chess. Of course he isn't a bishop any more, but only a dean, but he keeps his Bible like one. Hugh is playing billiards with him now, and told me in a whisper that he marked three for every cannon he made. Of course Hughie couldn't tell him it only counted two. It would have seemed unkind. Hugh has such tact."

[Pg 18]

"What I was saying," said Nadine. "Mama, he proposed to me again this evening, and I said 'no' as usual. Is he depressed?"

"No, dear, not in the least except about the cannons. Probably you will say 'yes,' sometime. And I want a cigarette and something to drink, and to be amused for exactly half an hour, when I shall take myself to pieces and go to bed. I hate going to bed and it adds to the depression to know that I shall have to get up again. If only I could be a Christian Scientist I should know that there is no such thing as a bed, and that therefore you can't go there. On the other hand that would be fatiguing I suppose."

Tommy gave her a cigarette, and Nadine fetched her mother her bedroom bottle of water out of which[Pg 19] she drank freely, having refused camomile tea with cigar ash in it.

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