VII
THE dinner, with this unpromising beginning, was, in fact, a sad failure. Mary, perhaps fatigued from her efforts at lunch, had not risen to the sudden occasion, and the steak was overdone. Mrs. Boulter was very much in the foreground, and to make matters worse, Erhart the sculptor, who had provided himself with a standing invitation to the house, dropped in. On him, at least, the excellent old whisky was not lost, but Basil's guest, the Englishman, declined it, and even the mild lure of the Chianti. A guest who is given a bad dinner, and will drink nothing but water, is a trying person. Basil was plainly nervous, and therefore more voluble than usual, and Erhart provoked as much controversy as possible, according to his wont. He even argued with Mrs. Boulter on women's rights, while she hurled the Constitution, the Pilgrim Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, and the doctrine of natural right at him. In reply he quoted large extracts from a recently published German work, in which women were disposed of as "too low in the moral scale even to be criminals," and were denied souls, on the basis of the facts that the soul resides in the
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