“Good time?” he asked.
“Very. I met the cream of the Colonial Office. It was thin but genuine cream. Were you very late, and was she very annoyed?”
Such a query, ordinarily, would be ignored.
“Five minutes or so; the lady was naturally——”
“Peeved?” she suggested. “And it was a lady, after all? Gordon, let me see her?”
He smiled.
“She wouldn’t interest you, Diana. She is rather an intellectual.”
Diana was not offended.
“The only thing I approve about the Bolsheviks is that they killed off the intelligentsia first,” she said without heat. “I suppose they got tired of seeing their plays and hearing about their spiritual insides. What do you talk about—Bimetallism or Free Will?”
He humoured her, being in a somewhat sympathetic mood. The strain of holding friendship to lecture-hall level was beginning to tell.