She took very little part in the conversation, yet she heard
it all, it was all hers.
They all went together into the drawing-room, as if they were one
family, easily, without any attention to ceremony. Fraulein handed the
coffee, everybody smoked cigarettes, or else long warden pipes of white
clay, of which a sheaf was provided.
'Will you smoke?--cigarettes or pipe?' asked Fraulein prettily. There
was a circle of people, Sir Joshua with his eighteenth-century
appearance, Gerald the amused, handsome young Englishman, Alexander
tall and the handsome politician, democratic and lucid, Hermione
strange like a long Cassandra, and the women lurid with colour, all
dutifully smoking their long white pipes, and sitting in a half-moon in
the comfortable, soft-lighted drawing-room, round the logs that
flickered on the marble hearth.
The talk was very often political or sociological, and interesting,
curiously anarchistic. There was an accumulation of powerful force in
the room, powerful and destructive.
Pages:
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191