'Yes, turn up the gas for _us_. You can bear the gaslight, he can't. Thank you. Now come over here and sit down and amuse me. Don't get a hassock at my feet, and say you want to worship me. It is all very well to worship solemn people, but I am not a bit solemn, and I want to be amused. Mr Nevill wanted to worship me and I sent him away.'
'I am afraid you will find me less amusing than Mr Nevill.'
Why, it wasn't the feet of the idol alone, but the whole of the idol was clay! What clay! What glorious clay! Was ever so frivolous a spirit in so splendid a mould?
'Nonsense! Come and sit down here. Not on a hassock, but on a good stout oak chair. That one will answer. Come nearer--nearer still. That will do.'
She was more flippant than Nevill. Why had he come back? Why had he not gone on and found some other place to stay at and there preserve his ideal? It was cruel, too cruel. Now he could never conjure up the image of her who sat before him, without hearing, not the music he had listened to that day at dinner, but these disenchanting, discordant, flippant words. What a magnificent creature she was!
'Well,' she said, fixing those dark eyes on him, 'where have you been since?'
'I have been out taking my first daylight look at London.'
'I think London is the most wonderful place in the world.'
'The most wonderful place in the world for dulness?'
'No; for everything that is great and noble and significant.'
A whistle! A lady whistling! A lady whistling at the idea of London being great and august! Well, he might expect anything now. No doubt she smoked.
He wondered she didn't call him simple 'Osborne.'
'Now look here, Mr Osborne, take this London Sunday and this very day as a specimen of dulness. What could be more satisfactory? I don't know what you did before dinner. I go in to dinner, I sit down. A man opposite me makes a remark; everyone stares. I say something, another man says something, Mr Nevill says something more. You try to say something, and choke and say nothing. Then four ladies give us scraps of sermons we had grown tired of as children. We come into the drawing-room, we go to sleep, and are waked up by you and Mr Nevill coming back. You walk over, stare at me in a most frightful manner, and rush away. Mr Nevill tries to make love to me, and fails. The other ladies go away to lie down or get ready for church, and I am left here alone until you turn up. When you do look in, you are as cheerful as a mute at a funeral. Now, tell me, Mr Osborne, is not that stupid?'