Gaston has not altered much, and I think I told you last year when we saw him his hair is not coupe en brosse now, so he is better looking, and he gets his clothes at an English tailor; and as Harry is not here to contrast him with, he really seemed very attractive and you couldn’t for one instant feel he was your aunt or grandmother, or that you could go to Australia with him safely!  And while all the nice American men—­and Valerie only has the nicest—­were saying bright pleasant things, he, who was behind my chair and apparently talking to Mrs. Van Brounker-Courtfield (she is here), managed to bend down and tell me he adored me, and had only come to America because he found I was not in London!

There was that lovely sense of having a secret, and although he sat on one side of Valerie, and Tom at the other, and I was miles away with the host—­it was a huge dinner party—­still his eyes said whatever eyes could say between bouquets of flowers.  On my other hand was the father of one of the guests.  Valerie had told us beforehand she considered him not of their world, but the daughter was charming and married to a youth who is one of their friends, so as he was staying with them she had to ask him too.  Both Octavia and I wanted to have him next us because these characters are so much more interesting than just their world, who are the same as Englishmen, almost, with the sex taken out, and a more emphasised way of talking.

Octavia and I tossed up for him and I won and he was a gem,—­a rugged powerful face and grey bushy hair and really well dressed.  He had eyes that saw through one at once and beyond, and his hands were strong and well shaped, with the most exquisitely polished nails.  He did not make horrid noises clearing his throat as lots of them do, and he was not the least deaf.  Instantly we got on.  He said if we were seeing America we were not to judge the nation by the men we should see in society in New York (each person we meet tells us this!); that we should go out West if we wanted to find the giant brains who make the country great.

“It’s not that I mean to disparage Mrs. Latour’s guests,” he said, looking round the table; “they are what they are, good enough in their way, humming birds and mocking birds to flit among the flowers, and pretty poor at that when you compare them with Europeans; but they don’t amount to anything for the nation.  They couldn’t evolve a scheme that would benefit a foot beyond their noses!” And when I asked him why he had allowed his daughter to marry one of them, he said with such a whimsical air, that women in America did what they “darned well pleased,” and that he guessed that everyone had to “work out their own problem along that line.”

“The Almighty played a trick on us,” he said.  “Putting the desire for one particular person into our heads, now and again in our lives leads to heaps of trouble, and don’t benefit the race.  If we’d no feelings we could select according to reason and evolve perfection in time.”