"She didn't want you to. The Playful Kitten business, you know--frisks
apropos of nothing to frisk about. But we all fancied you'd stay for the
dance." He yawned mightily, and gazed at Selwyn with ruddy gravity.

"Whisk?" he inquired.

"No."

"Cigar?"--mildly urgent.

"No, thanks."

"Bed?"

"I think so. But don't wait for me, Austin. . . . Is that the evening
paper? Where is St. Paul?"

Austin passed it across the table and sat for a moment, alternately
yawning and skimming the last chapter of his novel.

"Stuff and rubbish, mush and piffle!" he muttered, closing the book and
pushing it from him across the table; "love, as usual, grossly out of
proportion to the ensemble. That theory of the earth's rotation, you
know; all these absurd books are built on it. Why do men read 'em? They
grin when they do it! Love is only the sixth sense--just one-sixth of a
man's existence. The other five-sixths of his time he's using his other
senses working for a living."

Selwyn looked up over his newspaper, then lowered and folded it.