And she turned her observant eyes on the impassive face of her companion.

“Gracious lady,” he replied with deliberation and meaning, “it has given pleasure.  It is an evening to be remembered.”

The gracious lady suppressed a sigh of satisfaction.  Memory in high places was a thing fruitful and precious beyond computation.

Cicely’s party at the Porphyry Restaurant had grown to imposing dimensions.  Every one whom she had asked had come, and so had Joan Mardle.  Lady Shalem had suggested several names at the last moment, and there was quite a strong infusion of the Teutonic military and official world.  It was just as well, Cicely reflected, that the supper was being given at a restaurant and not in Berkshire Street.

“Quite like ole times,” purred the beaming proprietor in Cicely’s ear, as the staircase and cloak-rooms filled up with a jostling, laughing throng.

The guests settled themselves at four tables, taking their places where chance or fancy led them, late comers having to fit in wherever they could find room.  A babel of tongues in various languages reigned round the tables, amid which the rattle of knives and forks and plates and the popping of corks made a subdued hubbub.  Gorla Mustelford, the motive for all this sound and movement, this chatter of guests and scurrying of waiters, sat motionless in the fatigued self-conscious silence of a great artist who has delivered a great message.

“Do sit at Lady Peach’s table, like a dear boy,” Cicely begged of Tony Luton, who had come in late; “she and Gerald Drowly have got together, in spite of all my efforts, and they are both so dull.  Try and liven things up a bit.”

A loud barking sound, as of fur-seals calling across Arctic ice, came from another table, where Mrs. Mentieth-Mendlesohnn (one of the Mendlesohnns of Invergordon, as she was wont to describe herself) was proclaiming the glories and subtleties of Gorla’s achievement.

“It was a revelation,” she shouted; “I sat there and saw a whole new scheme of thought unfold itself before my eyes.  One could not define it, it was thought translated into action—­the best art cannot be defined.  One just sat there and knew that one was seeing something one had never seen before, and yet one felt that one had seen it, in one’s brain, all one’s life.  That was what was so wonderful—­yes, please,” she broke off sharply as a fat quail in aspic was presented to her by a questioning waiter.

The voice of Mr. Mauleverer Morle came across the table, like another seal barking at a greater distance.

“Rostand,” he observed with studied emphasis, “has been called le Prince de l’adjectif Inopine; Miss Mustelford deserves to be described as the Queen of Unexpected Movement.”

“Oh, I say, do you hear that?” exclaimed Mrs. Mentieth-Mendlesohnn to as wide an audience as she could achieve; “Rostand has been called—­tell them what you said, Mr. Morle,” she broke off, suddenly mistrusting her ability to handle a French sentence at the top of her voice.