When Traill had handed her her coffee, his sister moved slowly across the room to the settle where her fur coat, scarf and gloves were lying.

“You’re not going?” he asked, looking up.

“Yes, I must, my dear boy.  It’s getting on for ten.  Harold’s got some people coming in after the theatre, and I believe we’ve got a supper.  Do you think you could get me a taxi?”

“There’s not a stand here.  But you can get any amount of hansoms.”

“Yes, but I want to get home.  You’re sure to find heaps of empty ones in Piccadilly Circus just at this time.  Run and see—­do.  I’ll be putting on my coat.”

Traill went—­obedient.  They heard him taking the stairs two at a time in the darkness.  Then the door slammed.

“One of these days he’ll break his neck down those stairs,” said Mrs. Durlacher.  “Do you live in Town, Miss Bishop?”

She ran one sentence into the other inconsequently, as if they had connection.

“Well—­not exactly,” said Sally.  “I live in Kew.”

“Oh yes—­Kew—­it’s a very pretty place.  There are some delightful old houses on the Green—­the gardens side—­I believe they’re King’s property, aren’t they?”

“I know the ones you mean,” said Sally; “they are very nice, but I don’t live there.”  She added that with a smile—­a generous admission that she made no pretension to what she was not.  Upon Mrs. Durlacher it was wasted, as was all generosity.  She had not the quality herself; understood it as little as she possessed it.

“Oh, I wasn’t supposing that,” she replied easily.  “I was thinking that that was the only part of Kew I had noticed.  I think I’ve only been there once or twice at the most.  Have you known my brother long?”

Sally’s fingers gripped tight about her little parcel.  “Oh no, not so very long.”

“He’s a quaint, int’resting sort of person.  Don’t you find him so?”

To Sally, this description sounded ludicrous.  The fashionable way of putting things was utterly unknown to her.  To think of Traill as quaint, in the sense of the word as she understood it, seemed preposterous.  She could not realize that the Society idea of quaintness is anything which does not passably imitate or become one of itself.

“Interesting—­yes, I certainly think he is.  This room alone would show that, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, well, I don’t know so much about that.  He’d have this sort of room anywhere, wherever he lived.  It’s the fact that he chooses to live here and slave and work that I think’s uncommon—­so quaint.  But he’ll give it up—­he’s bound to give it up after a time.  You can’t wash out what’s in the blood.  Do you think you can?  He’ll drop the Bohemian one day—­it’s merely a phase.  I’m only just waiting, you know, to give the dinner on his coming out.”  She drew on her long gloves and smiled in her anticipation of the event.