servants understand the art of arranging a dinner table, and no enormous épergnes and show pieces of plate make a wall to block out our opposite neighbour, compelling us to gaze at our plates or our left and right companions for several hours), are Silvia and Sir George Vestris—she flirting as lightly as though the man sitting before her had never been any more to her than any other present; he, with his soul his eyes and words, watching her exquisite face as though his life hung upon her favour.
"Do you think she is altered?" asks Paul's voice beside me; and I turn with a start.
"She is more lovely, I think. I see no other difference."
He is looking at her with a glance that is most coldly critical. It has none of the suppressed intensity of the unwilling lover, or the open admiration of the enamoured one; it is simply and utterly indifferent. Verily, a man's love passeth quickly. And yet I wrong Paul Vasher in this, for his love did not pass away; he wrestled with and cast it out.
"Do you know," he says, "that you are the quietest young lady I ever took in to dinner in my life? I have not heard the sound of your voice for quite———"
"A minute!" I say, laughing; "and those at home would tell you that is an enormous time for me. But I know men hate to be talked to at dinner. You look upon women as a nuisance in that respect, and would abolish us from the table altogether if you could; now, would you not?"
"Not when they are as considerate as you," he says; "although I will confess that I have before now got up from dinner as hungry as I sat down, thanks to my companion's conversational talents."
"But if she talked, you were safe, surely? You need only have answered in monosyllables."
"Only, unfortunately, she had the finest knack of interrogatory
