She flushed a little. The man's perception was unerring.

"As no Englishwoman could," he pursued. "We English aren't
dramatic--it's bad form, you know."

"'We' English?" repeated Nan. "That hardly applies to you, does it?"

"My mother is French. But I'm very English in most ways," he returned
quickly. Adding, with a good-humoured laugh: "I'm a disappointment to
my mother."

Nan laughed with him out of sheer friendly enjoyment.

"Oh, surely not?" she dissented.

"But yes!" A foreign turn of phrase occasionally betrayed his
half-French nationality. "But yes--I'm too English to please her.
It's an example of the charming inconsistency of women. My mother
loves the English; she chooses an Englishman for her husband. But she
desires her son to be a good Frenchman! . . . She is delightful, my
mother."

Dinner proceeded leisurely. Nan noticed that her companion drank very
little and exhibited a most unmasculine lack of interest in the
inspirations of the chef. Yet she knew intuitively that he was alertly
conscious of the quiet perfection of it all. She dropped into a brief
reverie of which the man beside her was the subject and from which his
voice presently recalled her.

"I hope you're going to play to us this evening?"