“A Society in which members do not know each other, even by sight, has not many chances of leading the game.”
“Don’t you find, Mr Danford, that we are making progress in what you call the science of observation?” inquired Lady Carey.
“It is difficult to tell, Lady Carey. I do not find that we always deal with conscientious pupils. Observation can be developed in time; but it is the lack of memory that is so disastrous. Mrs Webster, for instance, cannot remember more than half-a-dozen faces.”
“Dear me, my dear guide, I do not wish to remember more than that number at present.”
“Ah! but Mrs Webster is not exclusive, and she had to give up having a reception the other day, because her guide had sprained his ankle. Mind you, Mrs Webster is sincere, she wishes to improve in the art; but other pupils are more puzzling, as, for instance, the vain people, who make hopeless blunders, and insist on telling you they know quite well who’s who, but they are having you on; this makes our work most trying.”
No sooner had Danford spoken these words, than the door was thrown open, and Montagu Vane and Sinclair entered. Lady Carey smiled on them and offered her right hand to be kissed.
“How delightful it is to know that there are a few—alas! a very few—_salons_ where one can go and have a chat.”
The little Apollo tripped across the room to greet Gwen and Lionel.
“My dear Mr Vane, I am afraid I am the only one here who can sympathise with you.”
“If we do not strongly oppose this vulgarising view of life, art will totally disappear from our social circles,” remarked Sinclair, as he sat down on a small settee beside Eva.
“Yes,” echoed Vane, “I am doing my level best to devise some means of checking this downfall of art. I suggested to Lord Mowbray this morning that we should invent a sort of artificial vestment. This is my plan. Each one would carry round his neck, wrist or waist, a small electric battery, which would throw a lovely colour all over one’s body, which would at least adorn, if it could not conceal it.”
“What a strange thing that we should, in a London drawing-room, openly discuss this question of nudity, when a few weeks ago no respectable person would have admitted the existence of shirt or trousers,” laughingly remarked Lady Carey.