When Mimi, seeing his hidden meaning, had only laughed gently and told him she did not make a practice of dining out when her husband was away, he had recognized at once that his efforts there were futile ones. So he had returned her laugh, called her a “little mid-Victorian,” and let the subject drop, never to be brought up again. Thereafter they had been friends of a sort. For he was amusing and often relieved the boredom of stupid dinners and parties by his scandalous dissection of the lives of the others present.
“Tell me, Bert, who are all these people?” she asked him.
“The Holy Behemoth alone knows and I doubt if she knows them all! She’s certainly outdone herself tonight!” he exclaimed as they stood looking over the crowd.
“There’s Miss Gloria Russell acting literary—no, not that one—the girl in the pink dress with the teeth sticking out like a circular awning over a window. She reads the Times Book Review every Sunday—and if you haven’t read the