"It's hardly worth while," said Grantie, "because you know it already. But just think of your telling me with disapproval that I have changed! So much the better for me, though you think it is a matter for regret."
"Darling, I never said you weren't quite delightful as you are," said Dodo.
"I wasn't aware that there was any such complimentary nuance in your criticisms," said Grantie. "Anyhow there is none in mine. I find that you have not changed in the least: you are in essentials precisely the same as you always were, and I could weep over you. I talked to Edith last night, when you were taking off the Princess's shoes or something, and she quite agreed with me. She said that you were amazing in the way that you had retained your youth. But she thought that was lovely, and there I disagreed. I find it tragic. It's an awful thing, Dodo, to be youthful at your age, which is the same as mine. If you were worth anything, if you had ever got out of yourself, your life would have changed you. You say that there is a man covered with moss: well, there is a tortoise covered with its bony shell. You remain the same marvellous egotist that you were when you dazzled us all thirty years ago, and it is just because I have changed that I see through you now. You have thought about yourself for fifty-four long years. Aren't you tired of the subject yet?"
Dodo felt a keen sense of injustice in this.
"But you don't understand me," she said. "After all, I don't know how you could. You haven't got a husband and a son for whom you would do anything. Oh, and a daughter," she added hastily.
"How you enjoyed saying that!" observed Miss Grantham.
Dodo paid no attention to this very just remark, and went on as if nothing had been said.
"Dear Grantie, you only understand things on your own plane. You don't know what marriage and children mean. But I do; I've been married over and over again. Because you pat other people's children on the head, and give tea and shawls to their parents, you think you know something about devotion."
Miss Grantham looked at her watch.
"If Jack or you had to die in a quarter of an hour's time, that is to say at five minutes to four in horrible agony, which would you choose?" she asked.