"No, Mrs. Stewart, if you would be loyal to me, don't look at the aforesaid 'loathsome contemporary,' as they say out West." It was Wooton who had approached, and interrupted Mrs. Stewart with an easy nonchalance that, in almost any other man, would have been an unpardonable rudeness. He threw himself on a chair and continued: "Mrs. Stewart, you have wounded me sorely. I bring you a disciple and what do you do? You buttonhole him, as it were, and preach treason to him. For, you must confess, that to tell people to look at _Life_ when they might be looking at--h'm--another periodical, whose name I reverence too highly to mention before a traitoress, is High Treason."
For reply, Mrs. Stewart tapped Wooton lightly on the lips with a large ivory paper-cutter that she had been toying with. "As I was saying, when rudely interrupted, look at--"
"My dear Mrs. Stewart, why this feverish desire to look at life? I ask you both, is life pretty? Remember M. Zola and Mr. Howells. They are supposed to give us life, are they not? Well, the one flushes a sewer, and the other hands us weak tea. I prefer not to contemplate life. I am obliged to read the morning papers because it is become necessary to know today the unpleasantness that happened yesterday. But otherwise I assure you that life--"
This time, Mrs. Stewart tapped him quite smartly with the paper-cutter.
"You know very well that puns have been out of fashion for more years than you have been of age. We were talking about art, and incidentally about a paper that encourages art, and you begin a dissertation on life! What do you mean?"
Wooton mockingly stifled an effort to yawn. "As if I ever, by the vaguest chance, meant anything! I hate to be asked what I mean. If I knew, I would probably not tell, and if I do not know why should I lie? The safest course in this world is never to mean anything and to say everything. If I had my life to live over again--"
Mrs. Stewart looked at him with a shudder, lifting her shoulders, while her mouth showed a smile. "Why speak of anything so unpleasant?"
"Ah, had you there, Wooton, eh!" It was Vanstruther, who had strolled over to pay his respects to Mrs. Stewart. She held out a hand; he pressed it lightly. He nodded to Lancaster, and then looked through the half-drawn portiers to where in the black-and-gold drawing-room the others were sitting and standing in colorful groups. Someone was at the piano playing a mazurka of Chopin's. There was a faint click of cups touching saucers; the high notes of the women and the low drawl of the men. Vanstruther looked at them all slowly, and then turned to Mrs. Stewart again. "All in?" he inquired.