“No one knows this better than I do,” said Gwen. “We were never taught the true value of anything or of anyone; we believed to have fathomed all things when we had seen the small sides of them, and human beings were only what they appeared to us relatively. I must say that the most difficult people to deal with at present are some of the mothers in Society. It is not that they mind, materially, this state of nature; I suppose they are making up their minds to it, and Lady Pendelton still repeats that a lady can always behave like one wherever she is placed and whatever happens.”
“Yes,” added Eva, “but my mother is convinced that it is the diffusion of classes that will bring our world to a tragic end.”
Eva suddenly stopped talking, and blushes covered her soft white cheek. She turned to Gwen.
“Darling, is that Ronald Sinclair standing near the Rotunda?”
“Yes, dearie, it is he; and George Murray is coming up to him with Lelia Dale. They have seen us.”
Sinclair, accompanied by his two friends, walked towards our group and was the first to speak.
“Have you heard, Lionel, that the manager of the Olympus is forced to close the doors of his theatre?”
“I expected that would soon happen,” murmured Danford.
“It was inevitable,” answered Lionel; “when music of that kind lies shivering without its usual toggeries, it must perish; for when crotchets and semi-quavers do not any longer help to pin a scarf or lift up suggestively the corner of a laced petticoat, comic opera has lost its meaning.”
“My dear Lord Somerville, you do not seem to grasp the real state of things. The Atrium will follow suit, and before you are a week older the great priest of upholsterers will have to retire,” vexatiously retorted Sinclair.
“Yes, and very probably he will be joined in exile by Turn Bull, who has no further need to study Abyssinian _bassi-relievi_. As you see, I quite grasp our present state of affairs,” smilingly answered Lionel.
“I think I agree with you, Lord Somerville,” languidly remarked Lelia Dale, who had for years been the jewel of dramatic art. “Turn Bull had developed to the highest degree the psychology of clothes.”
“I should call it the physiology of palliaments,” interrupted Murray, the apostle of subtle environment.