of beef. At the moment she came in to announce the readiness of lunch.

"Oh, is it lunch already?" said Nadine. "Can't we have it after half an hour? I should like to see the jade."

"Oh, quite impossible," said he. "She has taken such pains. It would distress her. For me, I should prefer not to lunch yet, but she is the artist now. They are fragile things, Nadine, eggs in spinach. You must come at once."

"How greedy you are," she said.

"For you that is a foolish thing to say. I am simply thinking of Antoinette's pride. It is as if I blew a soap-bubble, all iridescent, and you said you would come to look at it in ten minutes. You shall tell me news: if you talk you can always eat. What has happened in Philistia?"

Nadine frowned.

"You think of us all as Philistines," she said, "because[Pg 98] we like simple pleasures, and because we are enthusiastic."

[Pg 98]

"Ah, you mistake!" he said. "You couple two reasons which have nothing to do with each other. To be enthusiastic is the best possible condition, but you must be enthusiastic over what is worth enthusiasm. Is it so lovely really, that Aunt Dodo has settled to marry the Ripper? Surely that is a rechauffée. You wrote me the silliest letter about it. Of course it does not matter at all. Much more important is that you look perfectly exquisite. Antoinette, the spinach is sans pareil: give me some more spinach. But it is slightly bourgeois in Jack the R. to have been faithful for so many years. It shows want of imagination, also I think a want of vitality, only to care for one woman."

"That is one more than you ever cared for," remarked Nadine.

"I know. I said it was bourgeois to care for one. There is a difference. It is also like a troubadour. I am not in the least like a troubadour. But I think I shall get married soon. It gives one more liberty: people don't feel curious about one any more. English people are so odd: they think you must lead a double life, and if you don't lead the ordinary double life with a wife, they think you lead it with somebody else and they get curious. I am not in the least curious about other people: they can lead as many lives as a piano has strings for all I care, and thump all the strings together, or play delicate arpeggios on them.[Pg 99] Nadine, that hat-pin of yours is simply too divine. I will 

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