seriously--any more than his stumble.

"One day," he went on again in that curiously flavoured voice of
his, "my mother took a heroic decision and made up her mind to get
up in the middle of the night. You must understand my mother's
phraseology. It meant that she would be up and dressed by nine
o'clock. This time it was not Versoy that was commanded for
attendance, but I. You may imagine how delighted I was. . . ."

It was very plain to me that Blunt was addressing himself
exclusively to Mills: Mills the mind, even more than Mills the
man. It was as if Mills represented something initiated and to be
reckoned with. I, of course, could have no such pretensions. If I
represented anything it was a perfect freshness of sensations and a
refreshing ignorance, not so much of what life may give one (as to
that I had some ideas at least) but of what it really contains. I
knew very well that I was utterly insignificant in these men's
eyes. Yet my attention was not checked by that knowledge. It's
true they were talking of a woman, but I was yet at the age when
this subject by itself is not of overwhelming interest. My
imagination would have been more stimulated probably by the
adventures and fortunes of a man. What kept my interest from
flagging was Mr. Blunt himself. The play of the white gleams of
his smile round the suspicion of grimness of his tone fascinated me
like a moral incongruity.

So at the age when one sleeps well indeed but does feel sometimes
as if the need of sleep were a mere weakness of a distant old age,
I kept easily awake; and in my freshness I was kept amused by the
contrast of personalities, of the disclosed facts and moral outlook