"I find you are extremely modern," interrupted Edith.
"You speak as if you did not like that," said Nadine; "but surely somebody has got to be modern if we are going to get on at all. Otherwise the world remains stock-still, or goes back. I do not think it would be amusing to be Victorian again; indeed there would be no use in us trying. We should be such obvious forgeries, Seymour particularly. I consider it lucky that he was not born earlier; if he had grown up as he is in Victorian days, they would certainly have done away with him somehow. Or his mother would have exposed him in Battersea Park like Œdipus."
Edith leaned over the terrace wall, and took the double-bass bow out of the tall clump of sweet peas.
"There are exactly two things in the world worth doing," she said, "to love and to work. Certainly you don't work, Nadine, and I don't believe you love."
Nadine looked at her a moment in silent hostility.
"That is a very comfortable reflection," she observed, "for you who like working better than anything else in the world except perhaps golf. I wonder you did not say there were three things in the world worth doing, making that damned game the third."
Edith had spoken with her usual cock-sure breezy enthusiasm, and looked up surprised at a certain venom and bitterness that underlay the girl's reply.
"My dear Nadine!" she said. "What is the matter?"
Nadine glared at her a moment, and then broke into rapid speech.