it had never occurred to him to wonder what an omelette was! Now he
knew. At any rate, he knew what it looked like; and he was shortly to
know what it tasted like.

"Yes," she said. "Cut it with a knife. Don't be frightened of it.
You'll eat _it_; it won't eat you. And please give me very little. I ate
a quarter of a pound of chocolates after dinner."

He conveyed one-third of the confection to his plate, and about a sixth
to hers.

And he tasted--just a morsel, with a dash of kidney in the centre of it,
on the end of his fork. He was not aware of the fact, but that was the
decisive moment of his life--sixty though he was!

Had she really made this marvel, this dream, this idyll, this
indescribable bliss, out of four common fresh eggs and a veal kidney
that Mrs. Butt had dropped on the floor? He had come to loathe kidney.
He had almost come to swearing that no manifestation or incarnation of
kidney should ever again pass between his excellent teeth. And now he
was ravished, rapt away on the wings of paradisaical ecstasy by a
something that consisted of kidney and a few eggs. This omelette had all
the finer and nobler qualities of Yorkshire pudding and scrambled eggs
combined, together with others beyond the ken of his greedy fancy. Yes,
he was a greedy man. He knew he was greedy. He was a greedy man whose
evil passion had providentially been kept in check for over a quarter of
a century by the gross unskilfulness, the appalling monotony, of a Mrs.
Butt. Could it be that there existed women, light and light-handed
creatures, creatures of originality and resource, who were capable of
producing prodigies like this kidney omelette on the spur of the moment?