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“English hospitality is to make you at home—a pistol at your head; look at the poor Scot!” said Guy to Teresa.

She had been trying to hear what Rory was saying to Concha about the latest Revue, and, looking absently across at the silent, aloof David, said vaguely, “Oh, yes of course; he’s Scotch, isn’t he?”

“Inverness-shire, I should think. They’ve got a special accent there—not Scotch, but a sort of genteel English. It’s rather frightening, like suddenly coming upon a pure white tribe in the heart of Darkest Africa, it....”

Teresa heard no more, but yielded to the curious intoxication produced by half a glass of claret, the din of voices, and the hot and brightly lighted room.

By some mysterious anomaly, its action was definitely Apolline, as opposed to Dionysiac—suddenly lifting her from the Bacchic rout on the stage to the marble throne of spectator.

David Munroe, too, sitting silent by the Doña, happened to be feeling it also.

It seemed to him as if the oval mahogany table, on which the lights glinted and the glasses rattled, and all the people sitting round it, except himself, suddenly became an entity, which tore itself away from surrounding phenomena like the launching of a ship, perhaps....