The windows stood wide open in the heat; the garden lay in thick, soft shadow, where the pitchy shapes of trees could be discerned.  There was not a breath of air to fan the candle-flames above the flowers; but two large moths, fearful of the heavy dark, flew in and wheeled between the lights over the diners’ heads.  One fell scorched into a dish of fruit, and was removed; the other, eluding all the swish of napkins and the efforts of the footmen, continued to make soft, fluttering rushes till Shelton rose and caught it in his hand.  He took it to the window and threw it out into the darkness, and he noticed that the air was thick and tepid to his face.  At a sign from Mr. Dennant the muslin curtains were then drawn across the windows, and in gratitude, perhaps, for this protection, this filmy barrier between them and the muffled threats of Nature, everyone broke out in talk.  It was such a night as comes in summer after perfect weather, frightening in its heat, and silence, which was broken by the distant thunder travelling low along the ground like the muttering of all dark places on the earth—­such a night as seems, by very breathlessness, to smother life, and with its fateful threats to justify man’s cowardice.

The ladies rose at last.  The circle of the rosewood dining-table, which had no cloth, strewn with flowers and silver gilt, had a likeness to some autumn pool whose brown depths of oily water gleam under the sunset with red and yellow leaves; above it the smoke of cigarettes was clinging, like a mist to water when the sun goes down.  Shelton became involved in argument with his neighbour on the English character.

“In England we’ve mislaid the recipe of life,” he said.  “Pleasure’s a lost art.  We don’t get drunk, we’re ashamed of love, and as to beauty, we’ve lost the eye for’ it.  In exchange we have got money, but what ’s the good of money when we don’t know how to spend it?” Excited by his neighbour’s smile, he added:  “As to thought, we think so much of what our neighbours think that we never think at all....  Have you ever watched a foreigner when he’s listening to an Englishman?  We ’re in the habit of despising foreigners; the scorn we have for them is nothing to the scorn they have for us.  And they are right!  Look at our taste!  What is the good of owning riches if we don’t know how to use them?”

“That’s rather new to me,” his neighbour said.  “There may be something in it....  Did you see that case in the papers the other day of old Hornblower, who left the 1820 port that fetched a guinea a bottle?  When the purchaser—­poor feller!—­came to drink it he found eleven bottles out of twelve completely ullaged—­ha! ha!  Well, there’s nothing wrong with this”; and he drained his glass.

“No,” answered Shelton.

When they rose to join the ladies, he slipped out on the lawn.