“It’s just a homely affair,” she explained.  She had recovered her form and was now quite the lady again.  “Two other guests beside yourself:  a Mr. Airlie—­I am sure you will like him.  He’s so dilletanty—­and Mr. McKean.  He’s the young man upstairs.  Have you met him?”

Joan hadn’t:  except once on the stairs when, to avoid having to pass her, he had gone down again and out into the street.  From the doorstep she had caught sight of his disappearing coat-tails round the corner.  Yielding to impishness, she had run after him, and his expression of blank horror when, glancing over his shoulder, he found her walking abstractedly three yards behind him, had gladdened all her evening.

Joan recounted the episode—­so far as the doorstep.

“He tried to be shy with me,” said Mrs. Phillips, “but I wouldn’t let him.  I chipped him out of it.  If he’s going to write plays, as I told him, he will have to get over his fear of a petticoat.”

She offered her cheek, and Joan kissed it, somewhat gingerly.

“You won’t mind Robert not wearing evening dress,” she said.  “He never will if he can help it.  I shall just slip on a semi-toilette myself.”

Joan had difficulty in deciding on her own frock.  Her four evening dresses, as she walked round them, spread out upon the bed, all looked too imposing, for what Mrs. Phillips had warned her would be a “homely affair.”  She had one other, a greyish-fawn, with sleeves to the elbow, that she had had made expressly for public dinners and political At Homes.  But that would be going to the opposite extreme, and might seem discourteous—­to her hostess.  Besides, “mousey” colours didn’t really suit her.  They gave her a curious sense of being affected.  In the end she decided to risk a black crepe-de-chine, square cut, with a girdle of gold embroidery.  There couldn’t be anything quieter than black, and the gold embroidery was of the simplest.  She would wear it without any jewellery whatever:  except just a star in her hair.  The result, as she viewed the effect in the long glass, quite satisfied her.  Perhaps the jewelled star did scintillate rather.  It had belonged to her mother.  But her hair was so full of shadows:  it wanted something to relieve it.  Also she approved the curved line of her bare arms.  It was certainly very beautiful, a woman’s arm.  She took her gloves in her hand and went down.

Mr. Phillips was not yet in the room.  Mrs. Phillips, in apple-green with an ostrich feather in her hair, greeted her effusively, and introduced her to her fellow guests.  Mr. Airlie was a slight, elegant gentleman of uncertain age, with sandy hair and beard cut Vandyke fashion.  He asked Joan’s permission to continue his cigarette.

“You have chosen the better part,” he informed her, on her granting it.  “When I’m not smoking, I’m talking.”

Mr. McKean shook her hand vigorously without looking at her.