One morning Mrs. Strickland sent me round a note to say that she was giving a dinner-party that evening, and one of her guests had failed her. She asked me to stop the gap. She wrote:

When Mrs. Strickland introduced me to her husband, he gave me a rather indifferent hand to shake. Turning to him gaily, she attempted a small jest.

It was only neighbourly to accept.

But when at last I met Charles Strickland, it was under circumstances which allowed me to do no more than just make his acquaintance.

Strickland gave the polite little laugh with which people acknowledge a facetiousness in which they see nothing funny, but did not speak.

"It's only decent to warn you that you will be bored to extinction. It was a thoroughly dull party from the beginning, but if you will come I shall be uncommonly grateful. And you and I can have a little chat by ourselves."

"I asked him to show him that I really had a husband. I think he was beginning to doubt it."

New arrivals claimed my host's attention, and I was left to myself. When at last we were all assembled, waiting for dinner to be announced, I reflected, while I chatted with the woman I had been asked to "take in," that civilised man practises a strange ingenuity in wasting on tedious exercises the brief span of his life.

The Stricklands "owed" dinners to a number of persons, whom they took no interest in, and so had asked them; these persons had accepted. Why? To avoid the tedium of dining tete-a-tete, to give their servants a rest, because there was no reason to refuse, because they were "owed" a dinner.

There were ten people. They met with indifference, and would part with relief. It was, of course, a purely social function.

It was the kind of party which makes you wonder why the hostess has troubled to bid her guests, and why the guests have troubled to come.

The respectability of the party was portentous. The women were too nice to be well dressed, and too sure of their position to be amusing. The men were solid. There was about all of them an air of well-satisfied prosperity.

The dining-room was inconveniently crowded. There was a K. C. and his wife, a Government official and his wife, Mrs. Strickland's sister and her husband, Colonel MacAndrew, and the wife of a Member of Parliament. It was because the Member of Parliament found that he could not leave the House that I had been invited.

There was never a pause, and the noise grew louder.

Everyone talked a little louder than natural in an instinctive desire to make the party go, and there was a great deal of noise in the room.

Mrs. Strickland might congratulate herself that her party was a success.

But there was no general conversation. Each one talked to his neighbour; to his neighbour on the right during the soup, fish, and entree; to his neighbour on the left during the roast, sweet, and savoury. They talked of the political situation and of golf, of their children and the latest play, of the pictures at the Royal Academy, of the weather and their plans for the holidays.

Her husband played his part with decorum.

Perhaps he did not talk very much, and I fancied there was towards the end a look of fatigue in the faces of the women on either side of him.

Strickland shut the door behind her, and, moving to the other end of the table, took his place between the K. C. and the Government official.

They were finding him heavy.

Once or twice Mrs. Strickland's eyes rested on him somewhat anxiously.

At last she rose and shepherded the ladies out of one room.

He passed round the port again and handed us cigars.

The K. C. told us of a case he was engaged in, and the Colonel talked about polo.

We began to chat about vintages and tobacco.

He gave you somewhat the idea of a coachman dressed up for the occasion.

The K. C. remarked on the excellence of the wine, and Strickland told us where he got it.

He was a man of forty, not good-looking, and yet not ugly, for his features were rather good; but they were all a little larger than life-size, and the effect was ungainly.

I had nothing to say and so sat silent, trying politely to show interest in the conversation; and because I thought no one was in the least concerned with me, examined Strickland at my ease.

He was bigger than I expected: I do not know why I had imagined him slender and of insignificant appearance; in point of fact he was broad and heavy, with large hands and feet, and he wore his evening clothes clumsily.

He was clean shaven, and his large face looked uncomfortably naked. His hair was reddish, cut very short, and his eyes were small, blue or grey. He looked commonplace.

I no longer wondered that Mrs. Strickland felt a certain embarrassment about him; he was scarcely a credit to a woman who wanted to make herself a position in the world of art and letters.

He was null. He was probably a worthy member of society, a good husband and father, an honest broker; but there was no reason to waste one's time over him.

It was obvious that he had no social gifts, but these a man can do without; he had no eccentricity even, to take him out of the common run; he was just a good, dull, honest, plain man. One would admire his excellent qualities, but avoid his company.