in the course of their, Van Saetzema and Adolphine’s, life, that their house had become an ever-increasing omnium-gatherum: a busy house, it is true, where they “saw people,” but a nondescript house, where one never knew whom one would meet nor what the hostess was really aiming at. There was something maddening about Adolphine’s way of turning her house into a busy house, crammed with people. She would propose, for instance, to give a small dinner five days later; she would ask eight people, but remember, two days before the dinner, that she might as well ask a few more; then she would send round a few quite formal invitations, couched in terms which were out of keeping with the interval between the date of the invitation and the date of the dinner, with the result that, first of all, she utterly put out the hired chef; that sometimes there was a bottle of champagne short; and that her guests invariably appeared in every possible gradation of evening-dress. Or, else, she thought of giving a big dinner, received a number of refusals, did not know whom to invite instead, asked people informally, or even by word of mouth, and found herself entertaining half-a-dozen guests with a superabundance of dishes and wine, while once again the men were dressed, one in a swallow-tail coat and white tie, the other in a morning-coat; the ladies, one in a low-necked bodice, the other in a blouse: a disparity that was constantly giving them fresh shocks of dismay.
It was always a medley; and, even as she lacked
