“She is moving in regions that Eve can never know,” he thought.  “But how did Eve perceive that she had taken a fancy to me?”

The alleged danger to Charlie scarcely disturbed him.  Her appreciation or depreciation of Charlie interested him only in so far as it was a vehicle for the expression of her personality.  He had never met such a woman.  He responded to her with a vivacity that surprised himself.  He looked surreptitiously round the room, brilliantly lighted here, and there obscure, and he comprehended how every detail of its varied sumptuosity aptly illustrated her mind and heart.  His own heart was full of quite new sensations.

“Of course,” she was saying, “if Charles is to become the really great figure that he might be, he will have to cure his greatest fault, and perhaps it is incurable.”

“I know what that is,” said Mr. Prohack, softly but positively.

“What is it?” Her glance met his.

“His confounded reserve, lack of elasticity, lack of adaptability.  The old British illusion that everything will come to him who won’t budge.  Why, it’s a ten-horse-power effort for him even to smile!”

Lady Massulam seemed to leap from her chair, and she broke swiftly into French: 

“Oh!  You comprehend then, you?  If you knew what I have suffered in your terrible England!  But you do not suspect what I have suffered!  I advance myself.  They retire before me.  I advance myself again.  They retire again.  I open.  They close.  Do they begin?  Never!  It is always I who must begin!  Do I make a natural gesture—­they say to themselves, ’What a strange woman!  How indiscreet!  But she is foreign.’  They lift their shoulders.  Am I frank—­they pity me.  They give themselves never!  They are shut like their lips over their long teeth.  Ah, but they have taught me.  In twenty years have I not learnt the lesson?  There is nobody among you who can be more shut-tight than me.  I flatter myself that I can be more terrible than any English woman or man.  You do not catch me now!  But what a martyrdom!...  I might return to France?  No!  I am become too English.  In Paris I should resemble an emigree.  And people would say:  ‘What is that?  It is like nothing at all.  It has no name.’  Besides, I like you English.  You are terrible, but one can count on you.... Vous y etes?”

“J’y suis,” replied Mr. Prohack, ravished.

Lady Massulam in her agitation picked up the tumbler and sipped.

“Pardon!” she cried, aghast.  “It is yours,” and planked the tumbler down again on the lacquered table.

Mr. Prohack had the wit to drink also.  They went on talking....  A silver tongue vibrated from the hall with solemn British deliberation—­One!  Two!  The air throbbed to the sound for many seconds.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Mr. Prohack, rising in alarm.  “And this is Frinton!” She let him out herself, with all soft precautions against shocking the Frintonian world.  His manner of regaining the Majestic Hotel can only be described by saying that he ‘effected an entrance’ into it.  He went to bed but not to sleep.