"Yes," he said. "Why not?"

"Well--!"

"Come along!" he said, with fine casualness, and conducted her to the
eight swinging glass doors that led to the _salle à manger_ of the Grand
Babylon. At each pair of doors was a living statue of dignity in cloth
of gold. She passed these statues without a sign of fear, but when she
saw the room itself, steeped in a supra-genteel calm, full of gowns and
hats and everything that you read about in the _Lady's Pictorial,_ and
the pennoned mast of a barge crossing the windows at the other end, she
stopped suddenly. And one of the lord mayors of the Grand Babylon,
wearing a mayoral chain, who had started out to meet them, stopped also.

"No!" she said. "I don't feel as if I could eat here. I really
couldn't."

"But why?"

"Well," she said, "I couldn't fancy it somehow. Can't we go somewhere
else?"

"Certainly we can," he agreed with an eagerness that was more than
polite.

She thanked him with another of her comfortable, sensible smiles--a
smile that took all embarrassment out of the dilemma, as balm will take
irritation from a wound. And gently she removed her hat and gown, and
her gestures and speech, and her comfortableness, from those august
precincts. And they descended to the grill-room, which was relatively