When Paul came in, looking very grave, she told him with a wavering laugh, 'If I tried as hard for ten minutes to go to Heaven as I've tried all day to have this dinner right, I'd certainly have a front seat in the angel choir.

If anybody here to-night is not satisfied, it'll be because he's harder to please than St.Peter himself.' During the evening: Lydia seemed to herself to be in an endless bad dream.

The exhausting efforts of the day had reduced her to a sort of coma of fatigue through which she felt but dully the successive stabs of the ill-served unsuccessful dinner.

At times, the table, the guests, the room itself, wavered before her, and she clutched at her chair to keep her balance.

She did not know that she was laughing and talking gaily and eating nothing.