Before the birds appeared and the champagne had ceased to make its circle, he felt that he was now at home again, and that the term of his wandering away from society was one of folly.

He felt the joy and vigour of a creature returned to his element.
Why had he ever quitted it?
Already he looked back upon Dahlia from a prodigious distance.

He knew that there was something to be smoothed over; something written in the book of facts which had to be smeared out, and he seemed to do it, while he drank the babbling wine and heard himself talk.

Not one man at that table, as he reflected, would consider the bond which held him in any serious degree binding.

A lady is one thing, and a girl of the class Dahlia had sprung from altogether another.