Miss Proctor stood central, radiating the rich afterglow of her appreciation.  Her gaze was a little critical of her friends’ faces, as if she were measuring the effect, on a provincial audience, of Majendie’s conversational technique.  She swept down to a seat beside her hostess.

“My dear Fanny,” she said, “why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you—­”

“That he was that sort.  I didn’t know there was such a delightful man in Scale.  What have you all been dreaming of?”

Mrs. Eliott tried to look both amiable and intelligent.  In the presence of Mr. Majendie’s robust reality it was indeed as if they had all been dreaming.  Her instinct told her that the spirit of pure comedy was destruction to the dreams she dreamed.  She tried to be genial to her guest’s accomplishment; but she felt that if Mr. Majendie’s talents were let loose in her drawing-room, it would cease to be the place of intellectual culture.  On the other hand she perceived that Miss Proctor’s idea was to empty that drawing-room by securing Mr. Majendie for her own.  Mrs. Eliott remained uncomfortably seated on her dilemma.

Sounds of laughter reached her from below.  The men were unusually late in returning to the drawing-room.  They appeared a little flushed by the hilarious festival, as if Majendie had had on them an effect of mild intoxication.  She could see that even Dr. Gardner was demoralised.  He wore, under his vagueness, the unmistakable air of surrender to an unfamiliar excess.  Mr. Eliott too had the happy look of a man who has fed loftily after a long fast.

“Anne dear,” said Majendie, as they walked back the few yards between Thurston Square and Prior Street, “we shan’t have to do that very often, shall we?”

“Why not?  You can’t say we didn’t have a delightful evening.”

“Yes, but it was very exhausting, dear, for me.”

“You?  You didn’t show much sign of exhaustion.  I never heard you talk so well.”

“Did I talk well?”

“Yes.  Almost too well.”

“Too much, you mean.  Well, I had to talk, when nobody else did.  Besides, I did it for a purpose.”

But what his purpose was Majendie did not say.

Anne had been human enough to enjoy a performance so far beyond the range of her anticipations.  She was glad, above all, that Walter had made himself acceptable in Thurston Square.  But when she came to think of what was, what must be known of him in Scale, she was appalled by his incomprehensible ease of attitude.  She reflected that this must have been the first time he had dined in Thurston Square since the scandal.  Was it possible that he did not realise the insufferable nature of that incident, the efforts it must have cost to tolerate him, the points that had been stretched to take him in?  She felt that it was impossible to exaggerate the essential solemnity of that evening.  They had met together, as it were, to celebrate Walter’s