“Does Mr. Musa paint, too?” asked Audrey.

“Oh no!” Both his protectresses answered together, pained.  Tommy added:  “Musa plays the violin—­of course.”

And Musa blushed.  Later, he murmured to Audrey across the table, while Tommy was ordering a salad, that there were tennis courts in the Luxembourg gardens.

“I used to paint,” Miss Ingate broke out.  “And I’m beginning to think I should like to paint again.”

Said Nick, enraptured: 

“I’ll let you use my studio, if you will.  I’d just love you to, now!  Where did you study?”

“Well, it was like this,” said Miss Ingate with satisfaction.  “It was a long time ago.  I finished painting a dog-kennel because the house-painter’s wife died and he had to go to her funeral, and the dog didn’t like being kept waiting.  That gave me the idea.  I went into water-colours, but afterwards I went back to oils.  Oils seemed more real.  Then I started on portraits, and I did a portrait of my Aunt Sarah from memory.  After she saw it she tore up her will, and before I could get her into a good temper again she married her third husband and she had to make a new will in favour of him.  So I found painting very expensive.  Not that it would have made any difference, I suppose, would it?  After that I went into miniatures.  The same dog that I painted the kennel for ate up the best miniature I ever did.  It killed him.  I put a cross over his grave in the garden.  All that made me see what a fool I’d been, and I exchanged my painting things for a lawn-mower, but it never turned out to be any good.”

“You dear!  You precious!  You priceless!” cooed Nick.  “I shall fix up my second best easel for you to-morrow.”

“Isn’t she just too lovely!” Tommy murmured aside to Audrey.

“I not much understand,” said Musa.

Tommy translated to him, haltingly, and Audrey was moved to say, with energy: 

“What I want most is to learn French, and I’m going to begin to-morrow morning.”

Nick was kindly confusing and shaming Miss Ingate with a short history and catechism of modern art, including such names as Vuillard, Bonnard, Picasso, Signac, and Matisse—­all very eagerly poured out and all very unnerving for Miss Ingate, whose directory of painting was practically limited to the names of Raphael, Sir Joshua, Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough, Turner, Leighton, Millais, Gustave Dore and Frank Dicksee.  When, however, Nick referred to Monsieur Dauphin, Miss Ingate was as it were washed safely ashore and said with assurance:  “Oh yes!  Oh yes!  Oh yes!”

Tommy listened for a few moments, and then, leaning across the table and lighting a cigarette, she said in an intimate undertone to Audrey:  “I hope you don’t mind coming to the ball to-night.  We really didn’t know------” She stopped.  Her eyes, ferreting in Audrey’s black, completed the communication.

Unnerved for the tenth of a second, Audrey recovered and answered: