"
"He never would stand up for himself." Mr. Chester's gaze hovered
about the room, and paused. "Who's that fellow? I believe I've
seen him before somewhere."
A constant eddying swirl was animating the multitude. Whenever
the mass tended to congeal, something always seemed to stir it up
again. This was due to the restless activity of Mrs. Pett, who
held it to be the duty of a good hostess to keep her guests
moving. From the moment when the room began to fill till the
moment when it began to empty she did not cease to plough her way
to and fro, in a manner equally reminiscent of a hawk swooping on
chickens and an earnest collegian bucking the line. Her guests
were as a result perpetually forming new ententes and
combinations, finding themselves bumped about like those little
moving figures which one sees in shop-windows on Broadway, which
revolve on a metal disc until, urged by impact with another
little figure, they scatter to regroup themselves elsewhere. It
was a fascinating feature of Mrs. Pett's at-homes and one which
assisted that mental broadening process already alluded to that
one never knew, when listening to a discussion on the sincerity
of Oscar Wilde, whether it would not suddenly change in the
middle of a sentence to an argument on the inner meaning of the
Russian Ballet.
Plunging now into a group dominated for the moment by an angular
woman who was saying loud and penetrating things about the
suffrage, Mrs.
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