At each little table was a drama in progress, light or serious—­all the more serious for being light at the moment and unconsidered.  Morgan, who was so well informed in the gossip of society and so little involved in it—­some men have this faculty, which makes them much more entertaining than the daily newspaper—­knew the histories of half the people in the room.  There were an Italian marquis and his wife supping together like lovers, so strong is the force of habit that makes this public life necessary even when the domestic life is established.  There is a man who shot himself rather seriously on the doorsteps of the beauty who rejected him, and in a year married the handsome and more wealthy woman who sits opposite him in that convivial party.  There is a Russian princess, a fair woman with cool observant eyes, making herself agreeable to a mixed company in three languages.  In this brilliant light is it not wonderful how dazzlingly beautiful the women are—­brunettes in yellow and diamonds, blondes in elaborately simple toilets, with only a bunch of roses for ornament, in the flush of the midnight hour, in a radiant glow that even the excitement and the lifted glass cannot heighten?  That pretty girl yonder—­is she wife or widow?—­slight and fresh and fair, they say has an ambition to extend her notoriety by going upon the stage; the young lady with her, who does not seem to fear a public place, may be helping her on the road.  The two young gentlemen, their attendants, have the air of taking life more seriously than the girls, but regard with respectful interest the mounting vivacity of their companions, which rises and sparkles like the bubbles in the slender glasses which they raise to their lips with the dainty grace of practice.  The staid family parties who are supping at adjoining tables notice this group with curiosity, and express their opinion by elevated eyebrows.

Margaret leaned back in her chair and regarded the whole in a musing’ frame of mind.  I think she apprehended nothing of it except the light, the color, the beauty, the movement of gayety.  For her the notes of the orchestra sounded through it all—­the voices of the singers, the hum of the house; it was all a spectacle and a play.  Why should she not enjoy it?  There was something in the nature of the girl that responded to this form of pleasure—­the legitimate pleasure the senses take in being gratified.  “It is so different,” she said to me, “from the pleasure one has in an evening by the fire.  Do you know, even Mr. Morgan seems worldly here.”

It was a deeper matter than she thought, this about worldliness, which had been raised in Margaret’s mind.  Have we all double natures, and do we simply conform to whatever surrounds us?  Is there any difference in kind between the country worldliness and the city worldliness?  I do not suppose that Margaret formulated any of these ideas in words.  Her knowledge of the city had hitherto been superficial.  It was a place for shopping, for a day in a picture exhibition, for an evening in the theatre, no more a part of her existence than a novel or a book of travels:  of the life of the town she knew nothing.  That night in her room she became aware for the first time of another world, restless, fascinating, striving, full of opportunities.  What must London be?