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THE RECEPTION - Mr. Prohack
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The reception pleased Mr. Prohack as a spectacle, and it cost him almost no trouble. He announced his decision that it must cost him no trouble, and everybody in the house, and a few people outside it, took him at his word--which did not wholly gratify him. Indeed the family and its connections seemed to be conspiring to give him a life of ease. Responsibilities were lifted from him. He did not even miss his secretary. Sissie, who returned home--by a curious coincidence--on the very day that Mimi Winstock was transferred to Charlie's service in the Grand Babylon, performed what she called 'secretarial stunts' for her father as and when required. On the afternoon of the reception, which was timed to begin at 9 p.m., he had an attack of fright, but, by a process well known to public executants, it passed off long before it could develop into stage-fright; and he was quite at ease at 9 p.m.
The first arrivals came at nine thirty. He stood by Eve and greeted them; and he had greeted about twenty individuals when he yawned (for a good reason) and Eve said to him:
"You needn't stay here, you know. Go and amuse yourself." (This suggestion followed the advent of Lady Massulam.)
He didn't stay. Ozzie Morfey and Sissie supplanted him. At a quarter to eleven he was in the glazed conservatory built over the monumental portico, with Sir Paul Spinner. He could see down into the Square, which was filled with the splendid and numerous automobiles incident to his wife's reception. Guests--and not the least important among them--were still arriving. Cars rolled up to the portico, gorgeous women and plain men jumped out on to the red cloth, of which he could just see the extremity near the kerb, and vanished under him, and the cars hid themselves away in the depths of the Square. Looking within his home he admired the vista of brilliantly illuminated rooms, full of gilt chairs, priceless furniture, and extremely courageous toilettes. For, as the reception was 'to meet the Committee of the League of all the Arts.' (Ozzie had placed many copies of the explanatory pamphlet on various tables), artists of all kinds and degrees abounded, and the bourgeois world (which chiefly owned the automobiles) thought proper to be sartorially as improper as fashion would allow; and fashion allowed quite a lot. The affair might have been described as a study in shoulder-blades. It was a very great show, and Mr. Prohack appreciated all of it, the women, the men, the lionesses, the lions, the kaleidoscope of them, the lights, the reflections in the mirrors and in the waxed floors, the discreetly hidden music, the grandiose buffet, the efficient valetry. He soon got used to not recognising, and not being recognised by, the visitors to his own house. True, he could not conceive that the affair would serve any purpose but one,--namely the purpose of affording innocent and expensive pleasure to his wife. 
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