A party selected on these lines, however suitable for the serious business of the evening, could be infinitely wearisome for the purposes of dinner. Stephen thought he had never beheld two young women so little entertaining as the two Misses Atholl. All they talked of and all that George Tarrant talked of was the dances they had been to, and were going to, and could not go to, and the comparative values of various mutual friends, considered solely as dancers. It was like the tedious “shop” of the more fanatical golfers; and indeed at any moment Stephen expected to hear that some brave or other had a handicap of three at the Buxton Galleries, or had become stale from over-training, or ruined his form by ordinary walking. Stephen (or Muriel) had taken care that they should be sitting together, but though she was very lively and charming, and though her talk was less restricted in range than the talk of the Atholls, Stephen began to wish intensely that he had not come. And he thought of Margery, and was sorry that he had left her alone in the house to come and listen to this futile jabbering. She had approved enthusiastically of his coming, for she thought that he went out too little; but she had looked rather wistful, he thought, when he left. She liked dancing herself.