‘I won’t sit down,’ she said.  ’No, thanks, nothing to eat.  I wonder where Papa is?  Now, he enjoys music, though he is no musician.  I think Papa a wonderful man.  For years he has never had more than six hours sleep; and the work he does!  He can’t take a holiday; idleness makes him ill.  We were down in Hampshire in July with some relatives of Mamma’s —­ the quietest, sleepiest village —­ and Papa tried to spend a few days with us, but he had to take to flight; he would have perished of ennui.’

‘Life at high pressure,’ remarked Rolfe, as the least offensive comment he could make.

‘Yes; and isn’t it better than life at low?’ exclaimed the girl, with animation.  ’Most people go through existence without once exerting all the powers that are in them.  I should hate to die with the thought that I hadn’t really lived myself out.  A year ago Papa took me into the City to see the offices of Stock and Share, just after the paper started.  It didn’t interest me very much; but I pretended it did, because Papa always takes an interest in my affairs.  But I found there was something else.  After we had seen the printing machinery, and so on, he took me up to the top of the building into a small room, where there was just a table and a chair and a bookshelf; and he told me it was his first office, the room in which he had begun business thirty years ago.  He has always kept it for his own, and just as it was —­ a fancy of his.  There’s no harm in my telling you; he’s very proud of it, and so am I. That’s energy!’

‘Very interesting indeed.’

‘I must go up again,’ she added quickly.  ’Oh, there’s miss Beaufoy; do let me introduce you to Miss Beaufoy.’

She did so, unaware of Rolfe’s groaning reluctance, and at once disappeared.

The supper-room began to fill.  As soon as he could escape from Miss Beaufoy, who had a cavalier of her own, Harvey ascended the stairs again, and found a quiet corner, where he sat for a quarter of an hour undisturbed.  Couples and groups paused to talk near him, and whenever he caught a sentence it was the merest chatter, meaningless repetition of commonplaces which, but for habit, must have been an unutterable weariness to the least intelligent of mortals.  He was resolved never to come here again; never again to upset his peace of mind and sully his self-respect by grimacing amid such a crowd.  He enjoyed human fellowship, timely merry-making; but to throng one’s house with people for whom, with one or two exceptions, one cared not a snap of the fingers, what was this but sheer vulgarism?  As for Alma Frothingham, long ago he had made up his mind about her.  Naturally, inevitably, she absorbed the vulgarity of her atmosphere.  All she did was for effect:  it was her cue to pose as the artist; she would keep it up through life, and breathe her last, amid perfumes, declaring that she had ’lived herself out’.

In his peevishness he noticed that women came up from supper with flushed cheeks and eyes unnaturally lustrous.  What a grossly sensual life was masked by their airs and graces!  He had half a mind to start tomorrow for the Syrian deserts.