Next morning he awoke later than he expected, as usual, As usual he made shift with a dressing gown and a pair of bedroom slippers and sauntered into what Mme. Choiseul perversely styled the grande pièce. Madame as usual, had postponed her morning tasks and with Mouche upon her lap was heaving and palpitating over the news of a crime committed in the market place the previous evening. An impatient butcher had chopped up his wife with a meat-axe. Resignedly Grover sat down to listen to the details of the victim's ill-starred passion for a rival butcher, but in the middle of the recital the milk on the kitchen stove, as usual, boiled over with a nasty hiss, and Madame, with a stifled scream, departed. That meant that his coffee would be delayed, and the best way to fill the interval would be to play something on the antediluvian piano and try to avoid the three keys that stuck.
As he played, and ultimately as he drank his coffee, his immediate humdrum surroundings floated away and he was back, in imagination, among the strange company of last night, recapturing the aroma of it as one recaptures an arresting tune. Bits of witty talk darted into his recollection, with an echo of the voices and an image of the tired, over-wise glances, and he caught his breath with "holy dread." For these people had fed on honeydew and drunk the milk of paradise. Should one not therefore weave a circle round them thrice!
