“A prophet, most decidedly. He is a Mr. Miles Furley, of whom you must have heard.”
“Miles Furley!” she repeated. “I had no idea that he lived in this part of the world.”
“He has a small country house somewhere in Norfolk,” Julian told her, “and he takes a cottage down here at odd times for the wild-fowl shooting.”
“Will you take me to see him to-morrow?” she asked.
“With pleasure, so long as you promise not to talk socialism with him.”
“I will promise that readily, out of consideration to my escort. I wonder how it is,” she went on, looking up at him a little thoughtfully, “that you dislike serious subjects so much.”
“A frivolous turn of mind, I suppose,” he replied. “I certainly prefer to talk art with you.”
“But nowadays,” she protested, “it is altogether the fashion down at Chelsea to discard art and talk politics.”
“It’s a fashion I shouldn’t follow,” he advised. “I should stick to art, if I were you.”
“Well, that depends upon how you define politics, of course. I don’t mean Party politics. I mean the science of living, as a whole, not as a unit.”
“I don’t know what your political views are, Mr. Orden,” she said, “but you must look out for shocks if you discuss social questions with my niece. In the old days they would never have allowed her to live in Russia. Even now, I consider some of her doctrines the most pernicious I ever heard.”
“Isn’t that terrible from an affectionate aunt!”
Catherine laughed, as the Princess passed on. “Tell me some more about your adventures last night?”
She looked up into his face, and Julian was suddenly conscious from whence had come that faint sense of mysterious trouble which had been with him during the last few minutes. The slight quiver of her lips brought it all back to him. Her mouth, beyond a doubt, with its half tender, half mocking curve, was the mouth which he had seen in that tangled dream of his, when he had lain fighting for consciousness upon the marshes.
Julian, absorbed for the first few minutes of dinner by the crystallisation of this new idea which had now taken a definite place in his brain, found his conversational powers somewhat at a discount. Catherine very soon, however, asserted her claim upon his attention.
“Please do your duty and tell me about things,” she begged. “Remember that I am Cinderella from Bohemia, and I scarcely know a soul here.”