Birdigal was bowing, Michael saying: “Come out for a whiff! The next thing’s a dud!” Oh! ah! Beethoven. Poor old Beethoven! So out of date—one did RATHER enjoy him!

The corridor, and refectory beyond, were swarming with the restoration movement. Young men and women with faces and heads of lively and distorted character, were exchanging the word ‘interesting.’ Men of more massive type, resembling sedentary matadors, blocked all circulation. Fleur and Michael passed a little way along, stood against the wall, and lighted cigarettes. Fleur smoked hers delicately—a very little one in a tiny amber holder. She had the air of admiring blue smoke rather than of making it; there were spheres to consider beyond this sort of crowd—one never knew who might be about! – the sphere, for instance, in which Alison Charwell moved, politico-literary, catholic in taste, but, as Michael always put it, “Convinced, like a sanitary system, that it’s the only sphere in the world; look at the way they all write books of reminiscence about each other!” They might, she always felt, disapprove of women smoking in public halls. Consorting delicately with iconoclasm, Fleur never forgot that her feet were in two worlds at least. Standing there, observant of all to left and right, she noted against the wall one whose face was screened by his programme. ‘Wilfrid,’ she thought, ‘and doesn’t mean to see me!’ Mortified, as a child from whom a sixpence is filched, she said:

“There’s Wilfrid! Fetch him, Michael!”

Michael crossed, and touched his best man’s sleeve; Desert’s face emerged, frowning. She saw him shrug his shoulders, turn and walk into the throng. Michael came back.

“Wilfrid’s got the hump to-night; says he’s not fit for human society—queer old son!”