His grey-blue eyes smiled back at her.

"One doesn't ask reserve of a musician. He must give himself--as you do."

She flushed a little. The man's perception was unerring.

"As no Englishwoman could," he pursued. "We English aren't dramatic--it's bad form, you know."

"'We' English?" repeated Nan. "That hardly applies to you, does it?"

"My mother is French. But I'm very English in most ways," he returned quickly. Adding, with a good-humoured laugh: "I'm a disappointment to my mother."

Nan laughed with him out of sheer friendly enjoyment.

"Oh, surely not?" she dissented.

"But yes!" A foreign turn of phrase occasionally betrayed his half-French nationality. "But yes--I'm too English to please her.

It's an example of the charming inconsistency of women. My mother loves the English; she chooses an Englishman for her husband. But she desires her son to be a good Frenchman! . . . She is delightful, my mother."

Dinner proceeded leisurely. Nan noticed that her companion drank very little and exhibited a most unmasculine lack of interest in the inspirations of the chef. Yet she knew intuitively that he was alertly conscious of the quiet perfection of it all. She dropped into a brief reverie of which the man beside her was the subject and from which his voice presently recalled her.

"I hope you're going to play to us this evening?"

"I expect so--if Kitty wishes it."

"That's sufficient command for most of those to whom she gives the privilege of friendship, isn't it?"

There was a quiet ring of sincerity in his voice as he spoke of Kitty, and Nan's heart warmed towards him.

"Yes," she a.s.sented eagerly. "One can't say 'no' to her. But I don't care for it--playing in a drawing-room after dinner."

"No." Again that quick comprehension of his. "The chosen few and the chosen moment are what you like."

"How do you know?" she asked impulsively.

"Because I think the 'how' and the 'where' of things influence you enormously."

"Don't they influence you, too?" she demanded.

"Oh, they count--decidedly. But I'm not a woman, nor an artiste, so I'm not so much at the mercy of my temperament."

The man's insight was extraordinarily keen, but touched with a little insouciant tenderness that preserved it from being critical in any hostile sense. Nan heaved a small sigh of contentment at finding herself in such an atmosphere.

"How well you understand women," she commented with a smile.

"It's very nice of you to say so, though I haven't got the temerity to agree with you."

Then, looking down at her intently, he added:

"I'm not likely, however, to forget that you've said it. . . . Perhaps I may remind you of it some day."

The abrupt intensity of his manner startled her. For the second time that evening the vivid personal note had been struck, suddenly and unforgettably.

The presidential uprising of the women at the end of dinner saved her from the necessity of a reply. Mallory drew her chair aside and, as he handed her the cambric web of a handkerchief she had let fall, she found him regarding her with a gently humorous expression in his eyes.

"This quaint English custom!" he said lightly. "All you women go into another room to gossip and we men are condemned to the society of one another! I'm afraid even I'm not British enough to appreciate such a droll arrangement. Especially this evening."

Nan pa.s.sed out in the wake of the other women to while away in desultory small talk that awkward after-dinner interval which splits the evening into halves and involves a picking up of the threads--not always successfully accomplished--when the men at last rejoin the feminine portion of the party. And what is it, after all, but a barbarous relic of those times when a man must needs drink so much wine as to render himself unfit for the company of his womenkind?

"Well," demanded Kitty, "how do you like my lion?"

"Mr. Mallory? I didn't know he was a lion," responded Nan.

"Of course you didn't. You musicians never realise that the human Zoo boasts any other lions but yourselves."

Nan laughed.

"He didn't roar," she said apologetically, "so how could I know? You never told me about him."

"Well, he's just written what everyone says will be the book of the year--_Lindley's Wife_. It's made a tremendous. .h.i.t."

"I thought that was by G. A. Petersen?"

"But Peter is G. A. Petersen. Only his intimate friends know it, though, as he detests publicity. So go don't give the fact away."

"I won't. You've read this new book, I suppose?"

"Yes. And you must. It's the finest study of a woman's temperament I've ever come across. . . . Goodness knows he's had opportunity enough to study the subject!"

Nan froze a little.

"Oh, is he a gay Lothario sort of person?" she asked coldly. "He didn't strike me in that light."

"No. He's not in the least like that. He's an ideal husband wasted."

Nan's eyes twinkled.

"Don't poach on preserved ground, Kitty. Marriages are made in heaven."

As she spoke the door opened to admit the men, and somebody claiming Kitty's attention at the moment she turned away without reply. For a few minutes the conversation became more general until, after a brief hum and stir, congenial spirits sought and found each other and settled down into little groups of twos and threes. Somewhat to Nan's surprise--and, although she would not have acknowledged it, to her annoyance--Peter Mallory ensconced himself next to Penelope, and Ralph Fenton, the singer, thus driven from the haven where he would be, came to anchor beside Nan.

"I've not seen you for a long time, Miss Davenant. How's the world been treating you?"

"Rather better than usual," she replied gaily. "More ha'pence than kicks for once in a way."

"You're booking up pretty deep for the winter, then, I suppose?"

Nan winced at the professional jargon. There was certain aspects of a musician's life which repelled her, more particularly the commercial side of it.

She responded indifferently.