"Is it?" she answered hastily, seeing she was expected to say something. "I suppose it is quite good, of course. Who is it by? I suppose you can't say, though, without looking; and I haven't really the least desire to know. Talking of music," she continued blandly, chasing the sugar-plum round the saucer, "I have really had a treat this afternoon at St. James's Hall. Of course you have often heard Sapolienski? Don't ask me how to pronounce him; I think another of the horrors added to modern composers is the length of their names. But I'm ashamed to say I have never heard him before; I have been abroad, you see, and I am not a bit musical either. I enjoyed it much more than I expected though, and you should have seen the ovation he received at the end, ladies crowding on to the platform and throwing their rings at him! Oh, no, I am clearly not musical. But still, as he is the greatest musician of the day...."
Here Mrs. Reginald Routh found her opportunity, and used it.
"Oh, indeed? I have never heard of a player of that name, but really there are so many third-rate 'eskis' now that we cannot be expected to know them all. I dislike all kinds of sentimental effusion, and society lions, especially when they are musical ones, are singularly unpleasing to me. There can be no flattery where true genius exists, and if we were to reserve our praise for real hidden talent," she paused as the musician came within hearing and repeated her last words in a louder tone, "_real hidden_ talent, music would at last find her rightful place of honor among us. Do you not think so, Mr. Digby?"
Mrs. Reginald maintained a superb air of possession over music by making it always of the feminine gender, just as she did over the musician by calling him by his first name.
Mr. Digby Raleigh, thus intercepted in his passage across the room, turned on his heel and ran his fingers through his hair as he launched out on his favorite theme with enthusiasm. For besides being an interesting musician with a studio in the West End, he had views on metaphysics and Socialism as well, and although his warm discussions of these and other modern subjects conveyed little but confused notions to the minds of his feminine hearers, yet his enthusiasm only lent him a more potent charm in their eyes.