Then he had to talk, to hear what was said to him and what was said back and forth, and to answer, when it was necessary, with a tongue prone to looseness of speech that required a constant curb.

And to add confusion to confusion, there was the servant, an unceasing menace, that appeared noiselessly at his shoulder, a dire Sphinx that propounded puzzles and conundrums demanding instantaneous solution.

He was oppressed throughout the meal by the thought of finger-bowls.

Irrelevantly, insistently, scores of times, he wondered when they would come on and what they looked like.

He had heard of such things, and now, sooner or later, somewhere in the next few minutes, he would see them, sit at table with exalted beings who used them--ay, and he would use them himself.