The first arrivals came at nine thirty.  He stood by Eve and greeted them; and he had greeted about twenty individuals when he yawned (for a good reason) and Eve said to him: 

“You needn’t stay here, you know.  Go and amuse yourself.” (This suggestion followed the advent of Lady Massulam.)

He didn’t stay.  Ozzie Morfey and Sissie supplanted him.  At a quarter to eleven he was in the glazed conservatory built over the monumental portico, with Sir Paul Spinner.  He could see down into the Square, which was filled with the splendid and numerous automobiles incident to his wife’s reception.  Guests—­and not the least important among them—­were still arriving.  Cars rolled up to the portico, gorgeous women and plain men jumped out on to the red cloth, of which he could just see the extremity near the kerb, and vanished under him, and the cars hid themselves away in the depths of the Square.  Looking within his home he admired the vista of brilliantly illuminated rooms, full of gilt chairs, priceless furniture, and extremely courageous toilettes.  For, as the reception was ‘to meet the Committee of the League of all the Arts.’  (Ozzie had placed many copies of the explanatory pamphlet on various tables), artists of all kinds and degrees abounded, and the bourgeois world (which chiefly owned the automobiles) thought proper to be sartorially as improper as fashion would allow; and fashion allowed quite a lot.  The affair might have been described as a study in shoulder-blades.  It was a very great show, and Mr. Prohack appreciated all of it, the women, the men, the lionesses, the lions, the kaleidoscope of them, the lights, the reflections in the mirrors and in the waxed floors, the discreetly hidden music, the grandiose buffet, the efficient valetry.  He soon got used to not recognising, and not being recognised by, the visitors to his own house.  True, he could not conceive that the affair would serve any purpose but one,—­namely the purpose of affording innocent and expensive pleasure to his wife.

“You’ve hit on a pretty good sort of a place here,” grunted Sir Paul Spinner, whose waistcoat buttons were surpassed in splendour only by his carbuncles.

“Well,” said Mr. Prohack, “to me, living here is rather like being on the stage all the time.  It’s not real.”

“What the deuce do you mean, it’s not real?  There aren’t twenty houses in London with a finer collection of genuine bibelots than you have here.”

“Yes, but they aren’t mine, and I didn’t choose them or arrange them.”

“What does that matter?  You can look at them and enjoy the sight of them.  Nobody can do more.”