The guests went early. It was a relief to have them go. Not that they differed from other guests to whom Collingham Lodge was accustomed to open its doors, or that the dinner was less fastidiously good than Junia was in the habit of giving. Dinner and guests had both been up to form; and yet it was a relief when the last car glided from beneath the portico.
"Why do you suppose it is?"
Junia had asked this question so often of late that Collingham had ceased to try to answer it. Instead, he lit a cigar and strolled to the open French window. He, too, found it a relief to relax in the company of his family, though less puzzled than Junia at the state of mind.
"Oh, come out!" Edith called from the terrace. "It's heavenly."
It was a soft, warm, velvety night, starlit and voluptuous. The air astir was just enough to carry the scents of roses, honeysuckle, mignonette, and new-mown hay. Except for the dartings of small living things and the occasional peep of a half-awake bird, there was no sound but that of the plash of the fountains on the terraces. Edith went in for a light wrap for her mother; Collingham, his cigar in hand, dropped into the teakwood chair.
"It isn't our dinners only," Junia complained, when, with the wrap about her shoulders, she had settled herself in the wicker armchair she preferred; "it's all dinners. It's just as if people didn't enjoy them any more."
"Well, they don't." Edith half loungingly swung herself in a Gloucester hammock. "What we've got to learn, mother dear, is that entertaining, as we called it, was a pre-war habit which we've outlived in spirit, though we haven't quite come to the point in fact."
"There's something in that," Collingham agreed.
"And yet there's got to be hospitality," Junia reasoned. "You can't just live and die to yourself."
Edith swung lazily.