for life of the somewhat superannuated house.

When I'm reminded by some opposed discomfort of the present hour
how perfectly we were all handled there, I ask myself once more
what had been the secret of such perfection. One had taken it for
granted at the time, for anything that is supremely good produces
more acceptance than surprise. I felt we were all happy, but I
didn't consider how our happiness was managed. And yet there were
questions to be asked, questions that strike me as singularly
obvious now that there's nobody to answer them. Mr. Offord had
solved the insoluble; he had, without feminine help--save in the
sense that ladies were dying to come to him and that he saved the
lives of several--established a salon; but I might have guessed
that there was a method in his madness, a law in his success. He
hadn't hit it off by a mere fluke. There was an art in it all, and
how was the art so hidden? Who indeed if it came to that was the
occult artist? Launching this inquiry the other day I had already
got hold of the tail of my reply. I was helped by the very wonder
of some of the conditions that came back to me--those that used to
seem as natural as sunshine in a fine climate.

How was it for instance that we never were a crowd, never either
too many or too few, always the right people WITH the right people-
-there must really have been no wrong people at all--always coming
and going, never sticking fast nor overstaying, yet never popping
in or out with an indecorous familiarity? How was it that we all
sat where we wanted and moved when we wanted and met whom we wanted
and escaped whom we wanted; joining, according to the accident of
inclination, the general circle or falling in with a single talker
on a convenient sofa? Why were all the sofas so convenient, the