’I thought it might amuse you to fill it with your cigars—­just to pass the time,’ she said.

Stephen’s thought was:  ‘Well, women take the cake.’  It was a thought that occurs frequently to the husbands of Veras.

There was ripe Gorgonzola at dinner.  Stephen met it as one meets a person whom one fancies one has met somewhere but cannot remember where.

The next afternoon the music-stool came, for the second time, into the house.  Charlie brought it in his dogcart.  It was unpacked ostentatiously by the radiant Vera.  What could Stephen say in depreciation of this gift from their oldest and best friend?  As a fact he could and did say a great deal.  But he said it when he happened to be all alone in the drawing-room, and had observed the appalling way in which the music-stool did not ‘go’ with the Chippendale.

‘Look at the d—­thing!’ he exclaimed to himself.  ‘Look at it!’

However, the Christmas dinner-party was a brilliant success, and after it Vera sat on the art nouveau music-stool and twittered songs, and what with her being so attractive and birdlike, and what with the Christmas feeling in the air... well, Stephen resigned himself to the music-stool.

THE MURDER OF THE MANDARIN

I

‘What’s that you’re saying about murder?’ asked Mrs Cheswardine as she came into the large drawing-room, carrying the supper-tray.

‘Put it down here,’ said her husband, referring to the supper-tray, and pointing to a little table which stood two legs off and two legs on the hearth-rug.

‘That apron suits you immensely,’ murmured Woodruff, the friend of the family, as he stretched his long limbs into the fender towards the fire, farther even than the long limbs of Cheswardine.  Each man occupied an easy-chair on either side of the hearth; each was very tall, and each was forty.

Mrs Cheswardine, with a whisk infinitely graceful, set the tray on the table, took a seat behind it on a chair that looked like a toddling grand-nephew of the arm-chairs, and nervously smoothed out the apron.

As a matter of fact, the apron did suit her immensely.  It is astounding, delicious, adorable, the effect of a natty little domestic apron suddenly put on over an elaborate and costly frock, especially when you can hear the rustle of a silk petticoat beneath, and more especially when the apron is smoothed out by jewelled fingers.  Every man knows this.  Every woman knows it.  Mrs Cheswardine knew it.  In such matters Mrs Cheswardine knew exactly what she was about.  She delighted, when her husband brought Woodruff in late of a night, as he frequently did after a turn at the club, to prepare with her own hands—­the servants being in bed—­a little snack of supper for them.  Tomato sandwiches, for instance, miraculously thin, together with champagne or Bass.  The men preferred Bass, naturally, but if Mrs Cheswardine had a fancy for a sip of champagne out of her husband’s tumbler, Bass was not forthcoming.