“How well you do it, Lew!” she said.  “Sit down.”

He sat down and showed her a photograph of his work.  She looked at it long.  For an instant her worldliness dropped from her.  She glanced shrewdly at Lewis’s face.  He met her eyes frankly.  Then she tossed the picture aside.

“You are a nice boy,” she said lightly.  “I think I’ll give a little dinner for you.  This time your dad won’t object.”

“I hope not,” said Lewis, smiling.  “I’m bigger than he is now.”

Both laughed, and then chatted until Leighton came in to join them at tea.  Lady Derl told him of the dinner.  He shrugged his shoulders and asked when it was to be.

“Don’t look so bored,” said Lady Derl.  “I’ll get Old Ivory to come, if you ’re coming.  You two always create an atmosphere within an atmosphere where you can breathe the kind of air you like.”

Leighton smiled.

“It’s a funny thing,” he said.  “When Ivory and I meet casually, we simply nod as though we’d never shared each other’s tents; but when we are both caught out in society, we fly together and hobnob like long-lost brothers.  We’ve made three trips together.  Every one of ’em was planned at some ultra dinner incrusted with hothouse flowers and hothouse women.”

“Thanks,” said Lady Derl.

Lewis might have been bored by that first formal dinner if he had known the difference between women grown under glass and women grown in the open.  But he didn’t.  With the exception of Ann Leighton, mammy, and Natalie, who were not women at all so much as part and parcel of his own fiber, women were just women.  He treated them all alike, and with a gallant nonchalance that astounded his two neighbors, Lady Blanche Trevoy and the Hon. Violet Materlin, accustomed as they were to find youths of his age stupidly callow or at best, in their innocence, mildly exciting.  Leighton, seated at H lne’s left, watched Lewis curiously.

“They’ve taken to him,” said H lne.

“Yes,” said Leighton.  “Nothing wins a woman of the world so quickly as the unexpected.  The unexpected adds to the ancient lure of curiosity the touch of tartness that gives life to a jaded palate.  Satiated women are the most grateful for such a fillip, and once a woman’s grateful, she’s generous.  A generous man will give a beggar a copper, but a generous woman will give away all her coppers, and throw in herself for good measure.”

“When you have to try to be clever, Glen, you’re a bore,” remarked H lne.

“I’m not trying to be clever,” said Leighton.  “There’s a battle going on over there, and I was merely throwing light on it.”

The battle was worth watching.  The two young women were as dissimilar as beauty can be.  Both had all the charms of well-nurtured and well-cared-for flesh.  Splendid necks and shoulders, plenty of their own hair, lovely contour of face, practice in the use of the lot, were theirs in common.  But Vi was dark, still, and long of limb.  Blanche was blonde, vivacious, and compact without being in the least heavy.