They found besides Roger Michael a scientific man of name asked to meet Christopher, a writer of plays, a writer of essays, a noted Fabian, and as noted a woman reformer. The seventh guest was a little late. When she came, it was Hagar Ashendyne.
"What an unexpected pleasure!" said the Josslyns, and meant every word of it. "How long since that summer at the New Springs? Almost nine years! And you've grown a great, famous woman--"
"Not so very great, and not so very famous," said Hagar Ashendyne. "But I'm fortunate enough--to-night! You're a wind from home--you mountain-climbing, divine couple! The Bear's Den! Do you remember the day we climbed there?"
"Yes!" said Molly; "and Judge Black waiting at the foot. Oh, I am glad to see you! We did not dream you were in London."
"We--my father and I--have been here only a little while. All winter we were in Algeria. Then, suddenly, he wanted to see the Leonardos in the National."
Her voice, which was very rich and soft, made musical notes of her words. She was subtly, indescribably, transfigured and magnified. She looked a great woman. While she turned to greet others in the room, one or two of whom seemed acquaintances of more or less old standing, Molly and Christopher were alike engaged in drawing rapidly into mind what they knew of this countrywoman. They knew what the world knew--that she was a writer of short stories whose work would probably live; that her work was fabulously in demand; that it had a metaphysical value as well as a clutching interest. They knew that she was a world-wanderer, sailing here and there over the globe with a father whose insatiable zest for life crutches and wheel-chair could not put under. It was their impression that she had not been in America more than once or twice in a number of years. They read everything she published; they knew what could be known that way. They had that one summer's impression and memory. She was there still; she was that Hagar Ashendyne also, but evolved, enriched....
Roger Michael never had large dinner-parties, and the talk was oftenest general. The fare that she spread was very simple; it was enough and good; it gained that recognition, and then the attention went elsewhere. The eight at the round table were, through a long range, harmoniously minded; half, at least, were old friends and comrades, and the other half came easily to a meeting-place. Thought, become articulate with less difficulty than usual, wove with ductileness across and across the table. There sounded a fair deal of laughter. They were all workers here, and, necessarily, toward many issues, serious-minded enough. But they could talk shop, and one another's shop, and shop of the world at large, with humour and quick appreciation of the merrier aspects of the workroom. At first, naturally, in a time of public excitement, they talked the war in Africa, and the sick longing the country now felt for peace, and the general public foreboding, undefined but very real, that had taken the place of the old, too-mellow complacency; but then, as naturally in this company, the talk went to underlying, slow, hesitant movements, evolutionary forces just "a-borning"; roads that people such as these were blazing, and athwart which each reactionary swing of the pendulum brought landslides and floods enough, mountains of obstruction, gulfs of not-yet-ness. But the roadmakers, the pioneers, had the pioneer temper; they were spinning ropes, shouldering picks, stating to themselves and one another that gulfs had been crossed before and mountains removed, and that, on the whole, it was healthful exercise. They were incurably hopeful, though at quite long range, as reformers have to be.