‘He has:—­one ear.’

‘Ah?  She has the other open for a man of the world, perhaps.’

’Listens to him, listens to me, listens to Jarniman; and we neither of us guide her.  She’s very curious—­a study.  You think you know her—­next day she has eluded you.  She’s emotional, she’s hard; she’s a woman, she’s a stone.  Anything you like; but don’t count on her.  And another thing—­I’m bound to say it of myself,’ Carling claimed close hearing of Fenellan over a shelf of saladstuff, ’no one who comes near her has any real weight with her in this matter.’

‘Probably you mix cream in your salad of the vinegar and oil,’ said Fenellan.  ’Try jelly of mutton.’—­’You give me a new idea.  Latterly, fond as I am of salads, I’ve had rueful qualms.  We’ll try it.’

‘You should dine with Victor Radnor.’

‘French cook, of course!’

‘Cordon bleu.’

‘I like to be sure of my cutlet.’

‘I like to be sure of a tastiness in my vegetables.’

‘And good sauces!’

’And pretty pastry.  I said, Cordon bleu.  The miracle is, it ’s a woman that Victor Radnor has trained:  French, but a woman; devoted to him, as all who serve him are.  Do I say “but” a woman?  There’s not a Frenchman alive to match her.  Vatel awaits her in Paradise with his arms extended; and may he wait long!’

Carling indulged his passion for the genuine by letting a flutter of real envy be seen.  ’My wife would like to meet such a Frenchwoman.  It must be a privilege to dine with him—­to know him.  I know what he has done for English Commerce, and to build a colossal fortune:  genius, as I said:  and his donations to Institutions.  Odd, to read his name and Mrs. Burman Radnor’s at separate places in the lists!  Well, we’ll hope.  It’s a case for a compromise of sentiments and claims.’

’A friend of mine, spiced with cynic, declares that there’s always an amicable way out of a dissension, if we get rid of Lupus and Vulpus.’

Carling spied for a trap in the citation of Lupus and Vulpus; he saw none, and named the square of his residence on the great Russell property, and the number of the house, the hour of dinner next day.  He then hung silent, breaking the pause with his hand out and a sharp ‘Well?’ that rattled a whirligig sound in his head upward.  His leave of people was taken in this laughing falsetto, as of one affected by the curious end things come to.

Fenellan thought of him for a moment or two, that he was a better than the common kind of lawyer; who doubtless knew as much of the wrong side of the world as lawyers do, and held his knowledge for the being a man of the world:—­as all do, that have not Alpine heights in the mind to mount for a look out over their own and the world’s pedestrian tracks.  I could spot the lawyer in your composition, my friend, to the exclusion of the man he mused.  But you’re right in what you mean to say of yourself:  you’re a good fellow, for a lawyer, and together we may manage somehow to score a point of service to Victor Radnor.