“Youth feels… main stream of life… not giving it what it wants. Past and future getting haloes… Quite! Contemporary life no earthly just now… No… Only comfort for us—we’ll be antiquated, some day, like Congreve, Sterne, Defoe… have our chance again… WHY? What IS driving them out of the main current? Oh! Probably surfeit… newspapers… photographs. Don’t see life itself, only reports… reproductions of it; all seems shoddy, lurid, commercial… Youth says ‘Away with it, let’s have the past or the future!’”

He took some salted almonds, and Fleur saw his eyes stray to the upper part of Amabel Nazing. Down there the conversation was like Association football—no one kept the ball for more than one kick. It shot from head to head. And after every set of passes some one would reach out and take a cigarette, and blow a blue cloud across the unclothed refectory table. Fleur enjoyed the glow of her Spanish room—its tiled floor, richly coloured fruits in porcelain, its tooled leather, copper articles, and Soames’ Goya above a Moorish divan. She headed the ball promptly when it came her way, but initiated nothing. Her gift was to be aware of everything at once. “Mrs. Michael Mont presented” the brilliant irrelevancies of Linda Frewe, the pricks and stimulations of Nesta Gorse, the moonlit sliding innuendoes of Aubrey Greene, the upturning strokes of Sibley Swan, Amabel Nazing’s little cool American audacities, Charles Upshire’s curious bits of lore, Walter Nazing’s subversive contradictions, the critical intricacies of Pauline Upshire; Michael’s happy-go-lucky slings and arrows, even Alison’s knowledgeable quickness, and Gurdon Minho’s silences—she presented them all, showed them off, keeping her eyes and ears on the ball of talk lest it should touch earth and rest. Brilliant evening; but—a success?