Again Edith pointed an accusing finger at her.
"That's the worst of you," she said. "You have a fatal facility. You have always got what you meant to get. You've never had to struggle. Probably that means that you have never had high enough aims. What will the world say about you in forty years?"
"Darling, it may say exactly what it pleases. If in forty years' time there is anybody left who remembers me at all, and he tells the truth, he will say that I enjoyed myself quite enormously. But why be posthumous? Have another peppermint and tell me about your golf."
Edith did not have any more peppermints, so she took a cigarette instead.
"I have a feeling that we are all going to be posthumous with regard to our present lives long before we are dead," she remarked. "We can't go on like this."
"I don't see the slightest reason for not doing so," said Dodo. "I remember we talked about it one night at Winston when you fished in my tea-gown."
"I know, and the feeling has been growing on me ever since. There have been a lot of straws lately shewing the set of the tide."
"Which is just what straws don't do," said Dodo. "Straws float on the surface, and move about with any tiny puff of air. Anyhow, what straws do you mean? Produce your straws."
She paused a moment.
"I wonder if I can produce some for you," she said. "As you know, I was to have dined with the Germans to-night and was put off. Is that a straw? Then, again, Jack told me something this evening about an Austrian ultimatum to Servia. Do those shew the tide you speak of?"