"It hasn't arrived. So I am reduced, as you see, to listening to the
music."

"You are not musical?"

"Well, I don't like this band anyway. It makes too much noise. Don't
you think it rather a nuisance?"

"No. It helps these people to talk," she said, in a crisp, cheerful
voice, looking round the room.

"But they don't want any help. Most of them talk by nature as fast as
the human tongue can go!"

"About nothing!" She shrugged her shoulders.

Winnington observed her more closely. She was, he guessed, somewhere
near fifty; her scanty hair was already grey, and her round, plain face
was wrinkled and scored like a dried apple. But her eyes, which were
dark and singularly bright, expressed both energy and wit; and her
mouth, of which the upper lip was caught up a little at one corner,
seemed as though quivering with unspoken and, as he thought, sarcastic
speech. Was she, perchance, the Swedish _Schriftstellerin_ of whom he
had heard the porter talking to some of the hotel guests? She looked a
lonely-ish, independent sort of body.

"They seem nice, kindly people," he said, glancing round the salon.
"And how they enjoy life!"