Without consulting Mr. Prohack’s wishes, Ozzie drew the ladies towards the great lounge, and Mr. Prohack at a distance unwillingly after them.  In the lounge so abundantly enlarged and enriched since the days of the celebrated Felix Babylon, the founder of the hotel, post-lunch coffee was merging into afternoon tea.  The number of idle persons in the world, and the number of busy persons who ministered to them, and the number of artistic persons who played voluptuous music to their idleness, struck Mr. Prohack as merely prodigious.  He had not dreamed that idleness on so grandiose a scale flourished in the city which to him had always been a city of hard work and limited meal-hours.  He saw that he had a great deal to learn before he could hope to be as skilled in idleness as the lowest of these experts in the lounge.  He tapped his foot warningly.  No effect on his women.  He tapped more loudly, as the hatred of being in a hurry took possession of him.  Eve looked round with a delightful placatory smile which conjured an answering smile into the face of her husband.

He tried to be irritated after smiling, and advancing said in a would-be fierce tone: 

“If this lunch lasts much longer I shall barely have time to dress for dinner.”

But the effort was a failure—­so complete that Sissie laughed at him.

He had expected that in the car his women would relate to him the sayings and doings of Ozzie Morfey in relation to the United League of all the Arts.  But they said not a syllable on the matter.  He knew they were hiding something formidable from him.  He might have put a question, but he was too proud to do so.  Further, he despised them because they essayed to discuss Lady Massulam impartially, as though she was just a plain body, or nobody at all.  A nauseating pretence on their part.

Crossing a street, the car was held up by a procession of unemployed, with guardian policemen, a band consisting chiefly of drums, and a number of collarless powerful young men who shook white boxes of coppers menacingly in the faces of passers-by.

“Instead of encouraging them, the police ought to forbid these processions of unemployed,” said Eve gravely.  “They’re becoming a perfect nuisance.”

“Why!” said Mr. Prohack, “this car of yours is a procession of unemployed.”

This sardonic pleasantry pleased Mr. Prohack as much as it displeased Mrs. Prohack.  It seemed to alleviate his various worries, and the process of alleviation went further when he remembered that, though he would be late for his important appointment, he had really lost no time because Dr. Veiga had forbidden him to keep this particular appointment earlier than two full hours after a meal.

“Don’t take cold, darling,” Eve urged with loving solicitude as he left the car to enter the place of rendezvous.  Sissie grinned at him mockingly.  They both knew that he had never kept such an appointment before.