and Strauss, justice, marriage, and De Maupassant, and whether people were losing their souls through materialism, and sometimes one of them would get up and walk about the room.  But to-night the only words she could catch were the names of two politicians whom nobody seemed to approve of, except that nice one who was going to bite.  Once very timidly she asked Colonel Martlett whether he liked Strauss, and was puzzled by his answer:  “Rather; those ’Tales of Hoffmann’ are rippin’, don’t you think?  You go to the opera much?” She could not, of course, know that the thought which instantly rose within her was doing the governing classes a grave injustice—­ almost all of whom save Colonel Martlett knew that the ’Tales of Hoffmann’ were by one Offenbach.  But beyond all things she felt she would never, never learn to talk as they were all talking—­so quickly, so continuously, so without caring whether everybody or only the person they were talking to heard what they said.  She had always felt that what you said was only meant for the person you said it to, but here in the great world she must evidently not say anything that was not meant for everybody, and she felt terribly that she could not think of anything of that sort to say.  And suddenly she began to want to be alone.  That, however, was surely wicked and wasteful, when she ought to be learning such a tremendous lot; and yet, what was there to learn?  And listening just sufficiently to Colonel Martlett, who was telling her how great a man he thought a certain general, she looked almost despairingly at the one who was going to bite.  He was quite silent at that moment, gazing at his plate, which was strangely empty.  And Nedda thought:  ’He has jolly wrinkles about his eyes, only they might be heart disease; and I like the color of his face, so nice and yellow, only that might be liver.  But I do like him—­I wish I’d been sitting next to him; he looks real.’  From that thought, of the reality of a man whose name she did not know, she passed suddenly into the feeling that nothing else of this about her was real at all, neither the talk nor the faces, not even the things she was eating.  It was all a queer, buzzing dream.  Nor did that sensation of unreality cease when her aunt began collecting her gloves, and they trooped forth to the drawing-room.  There, seated between Mrs. Sleesor and Lady Britto, with Lady Malloring opposite, and Miss Bawtrey leaning over the piano toward them, she pinched herself to get rid of the feeling that, when all these were out of sight of each other, they would become silent and have on their lips a little, bitter smile.  Would it be like that up in their bedrooms, or would it only be on her (Nedda’s) own lips that this little smile would come?  It was a question she could not answer; nor could she very well ask it of any of these ladies.  She looked them over as they sat there talking and felt very lonely.  And suddenly her eyes fell on her grandmother.  Frances Freeland was seated