Mrs. Armiger, the latest embodiment of Dresham's instinct for the
remarkable, was an innocent beauty who for years had distilled
dulness among a set of people now self-condemned by their
inability to appreciate her. Under Dresham's tutelage she had
developed into a "thoughtful woman," who read his leaders in the
Radiator and bought the books he recommended. When a new novel
appeared, people wanted to know what Mrs. Armiger thought of it;
and a young gentleman who had made a trip in Touraine had recently
inscribed to her the wide-margined result of his explorations.

Glennard, leaning back with his head against the rail and a slit
of fugitive blue between his half-closed lids, vaguely wished she
wouldn't spoil the afternoon by making people talk; though he
reduced his annoyance to the minimum by not listening to what was
said, there remained a latent irritation against the general
futility of words.

His wife's gift of silence seemed to him the most vivid commentary
on the clumsiness of speech as a means of intercourse, and his
eyes had turned to her in renewed appreciation of this finer
faculty when Mrs. Armiger's voice abruptly brought home to him the
underrated potentialities of language.

"You've read them, of course, Mrs. Glennard?" he heard her ask;
and, in reply to Alexa's vague interrogation--"Why, the 'Aubyn
Letters'--it's the only book people are talking of this week."

Mrs. Dresham immediately saw her advantage. "You HAVEN'T read
them? How very extraordinary! As Mrs. Armiger says, the book's