He was in that hypersenstive and nervous state favourable for recording currents foreign to itself.  Things he had never before noticed now had profound effect on him, such as the tone in which men spoke of women—­not precisely with hostility, nor exactly with contempt best, perhaps, described as cultured jeering; never, of course, when men spoke of their own wives, mothers, sisters, or immediate friends, but merely when they spoke of any other women.  He reflected upon this, and came to the conclusion that, among the upper classes, each man’s own property was holy, while other women were created to supply him with gossip, jests, and spice.  Another thing that struck him was the way in which the war then going on was made into an affair of class.  In their view it was a baddish business, because poor hack Blank and Peter Blank-Blank had lost their lives, and poor Teddy Blank had now one arm instead of two.  Humanity in general was omitted, but not the upper classes, nor, incidentally, the country which belonged to them.  For there they were, all seated in a row, with eyes fixed on the horizon of their lawns.

Late one evening, billiards and music being over and the ladies gone, Shelton returned from changing to his smoking-suit, and dropped into one of the great arm-chairs that even in summer made a semicircle round the fendered hearth.  Fresh from his good-night parting with Antonia, he sat perhaps ten minutes before he began to take in all the figures in their parti-coloured smoking jackets, cross-legged, with glasses in their hands, and cigars between their teeth.

The man in the next chair roused him by putting down his tumbler with a tap, and seating himself upon the cushioned fender.  Through the mist of smoke, with shoulders hunched, elbows and knees crooked out, cigar protruding, beak-ways, below his nose, and the crimson collar of his smoking jacket buttoned close as plumage on his breast, he looked a little like a gorgeous bird.

“They do you awfully well,” he said.

A voice from the chair on Shelton’s right replied,

“They do you better at Verado’s.”

“The Veau d’Or ’s the best place; they give you Turkish baths for nothing!” drawled a fat man with a tiny mouth.

The suavity of this pronouncement enfolded all as with a blessing.  And at once, as if by magic, in the old, oak-panelled room, the world fell naturally into its three departments:  that where they do you well; that where they do you better; and that where they give you Turkish baths for nothing.

“If you want Turkish baths,” said a tall youth with clean red face, who had come into the room, and stood, his mouth a little open, and long feet jutting with sweet helplessness in front of him, “you should go, you know, to Buda Pesth; most awfully rippin’ there.”

Shelton saw an indescribable appreciation rise on every face, as though they had been offered truffles or something equally delicious.