artificial growth.
"It leaves a great deal to the imagination, doesn't it?" said Ada

Spelvexit, who had edged away from the range of Lady Caroline's
tongue.

"At any rate one can tell who it's meant for," said Serena
Golackly.

"Oh, yes, it's a good likeness of dear Francesca," admitted Ada;
"of course, it flatters her."

"That, too, is a fault on the right side in portrait painting,"
said Serena; "after all, if posterity is going to stare at one for

centuries it's only kind and reasonable to be looking just a little
better than one's best."

"What a curiouslyunequal style the artist has," continued Ada,
almost as if she felt a personal grievance against him; "I was just

noticing what a lack of soul there was in most of his portraits.
Dear Winifred, you know, who speaks so beautifully and feelingly at

my gatherings for old women, he's made her look just an ordinary
dairy-maidish blonde; and Francesca, who is quite the most soulless

woman I've ever met, well, he's given her quite - "
"Hush," said Serena, "the Bassington boy is just behind you."

Comus stood looking at the portrait of his mother with the feeling
of one who comes suddenly across a once-familiar half-forgotten

acquaintance in unfamiliar surroundings. The likeness was
undoubtedly a good one, but the artist had caught an expression in

Francesca's eyes which few people had ever seen there. It was the
expression of a woman who had forgotten for one short moment to be

absorbed in the small cares and excitements of her life, the money
worries and little social plannings, and had found time to send a

look of half-wistfulfriendliness to some sympathetic companion.
Comus could recall that look, fitful and fleeting, in his mother's

eyes when she had been a few years younger, before her world had
grown to be such a committee-room of ways and means. Almost as a

re-discovery he remembered that she had once figured in his boyish
mind as a "rather good sort," more ready to see the laughable side

of a piece of mischief than to labour forth a reproof. That the
bygone feeling of good fellowship had been stamped out was, he

knew, probably in great part his own doing, and it was possible
that the old friendliness was still there under the surface of

things, ready to show itself again if he willed it, and friends
were becoming scarcer with him than enemies in these days. Looking

at the picture with its wistful hint of a long ago comradeship,
Comus made up his mind that he very much wanted things to be back

on their earlier footing, and to see again on his mother's face the
look that the artist had caught and perpetuated in its momentary

flitting. If the projected Elaine-marriage came off, and in spite
of recent maladroit behaviour on his part he still counted it an

assured thing, much of the immediate cause for estrangement between
himself and his mother would be removed, or at any rate, easily

removable. With the influence of Elaine's money behind him he
promised himself that he would find some occupation that would

remove from himself the reproach of being a waster and idler.
There were lots of careers, he told himself, that were open to a

man with solid financial backing and good connections. There might
yet be jolly times ahead, in which his mother would have her share

of the good things that were going, and carking thin-lipped Henry
Greech and other of Comus's detractors could take their sour looks

and words out of sight and hearing. Thus, staring at the picture
as though he were studying its every detail, and seeing really only

that wistful friendly smile, Comus made his plans and dispositions
for a battle that was already fought and lost.

The crowd grew thicker in the galleries, cheerfullyenduring an
amount of overcrowding that would have been fiercely resented in a

railway carriage. Near the entrance Mervyn Quentock was talking to
a Serene Highness, a lady who led a life of obtrusive usefulness,

largely imposed on her by a good-naturedinability to say "No."
"That woman creates a positivedraught with the number of bazaars

she opens," a frivolously-spoken ex-Cabinet Minister had once
remarked. At the present moment she was being whimsically

apologetic.
"When I think of the legions of well-meaning young men and women to

whom I've given away prizes for proficiency in art-school
curriculum, I feel that I ought not to show my face inside a

picture gallery. I always imagine that my punishment in another
world will be perpetually sharpening pencils and cleaning palettes

for unending relays of misguided young people whom I deliberately
encouraged in their artistic delusions."

"Do you suppose we shall all get appropriatepunishments in another
world for our sins in this?" asked Quentock.

"Not so much for our sins as for our indiscretions; they are the
things which do the most harm and cause the greatest trouble. I

feel certain that Christopher Columbus will undergo the endless
torment of being discovered by parties of American tourists. You

see I am quite old fashioned in my ideas about the terrors and
inconveniences of the next world. And now I must be running away;

I've got to open a Free Library somewhere. You know the sort of
thing that happens - one unveils a bust of Carlyle and makes a

speech about Ruskin, and then people come in their thousands and
read 'Rabid Ralph, or Should he have Bitten Her?' Don't forget,

please, I'm going to have the medallion with the fat cupid sitting
on a sundial. And just one thing more - perhaps I ought not to ask

you, but you have such nice kind eyes, you embolden one to make
daring requests, would you send me the recipe for those lovely

chestnut-and-chicken-liver sandwiches? I know the ingredients of
course, but it's the proportions that make such a difference - just

how much liver to how much chestnut, and what amount of red pepper
and other things. Thank you so much. I really am going now."

Staring round with a vague half-smile at everybody within nodding
distance, Her Serene Highness made one of her characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic exits,

which Lady Caroline declared always reminded her of a scrambled egg
slipping off a piece of toast. At the entrance she stopped for a

moment to exchange a word or two with a young man who had just
arrived. From a corner where he was momentarily hemmed in by a

group of tea-consuming dowagers, Comus recognised the newcomer as
Courtenay Youghal, and began slowly to labour his way towards him.

Youghal was not at the moment the person whose society he most
craved for in the world, but there was at least the possibility

that he might provide an opportunity for a game of bridge, which
was the dominant desire of the moment. The young politician was

already surrounded by a group of friends and acquaintances, and was
evidently being made the recipient of a salvo of congratulation -

presumably on his recent performances in the Foreign Office debate,
Comus concluded. But Youghal himself seemed to be announcing the

event with which the congratulations were connected. Had some
dramatic catastrophe overtaken the Government, Comus wondered. And

then, as he pressed nearer, a chance word, the coupling of two
names, told him the news.

CHAPTER XI
AFTER the momentous lunch at the Corridor Restaurant Elaine had

returned to Manchester Square (where she was staying with one of
her numerous aunts) in a frame of mind that embraced a tangle of

competing emotions. In the first place she was conscious of a
dominant feeling of relief; in a moment of impetuosity, not wholly

uninfluenced by pique, she had settled the problem which hours of
hard thinking and serious heart-searching had brought no nearer to

solution, and, although she felt just a little inclined to be
scared at the headlong manner of her final decision, she had now

very little doubt in her own mind that the decision had been the
right one. In fact the wonder seemed rather that she should have

been so long in doubt as to which of her wooers really enjoyed her
honest approval. She had been in love, these many weeks past with

an imaginary Comus, but now that she had definitely walked out of
her dreamland she saw that nearly all the qualities that had

appealed to her on his behalf had been absent from, or only
fitfully present in, the character of the real Comus. And now that

she had installed Youghal in the first place of her affections he
had rapidly acquired in her eyes some of the qualities which ranked

highest in her estimation. Like the proverbial buyer she had the
happy femininetendency of magnifying the worth of her possession

as soon as she had acquired it. And Courtenay Youghal gave Elaine