Muriel intervened quickly:
"I met a girl who knew Maury, the other day, and she says he doesn't drink any more. He's getting pretty cagey."
"Doesn't?"
"Practically not at all. He's making piles of money. He's sort of changed since the war. He's going to marry a girl in Philadelphia who has millions, Ceci Larrabee—anyhow, that's what Town Tattle said."
"He's thirty-three," said Anthony, thinking aloud. But it's odd to imagine his getting married. I used to think he was so brilliant."
"He was," murmured Gloria, "in a way."
"But brilliant people don't settle down in business—or do they? Or what do they do? Or what becomes of everybody you used to know and have so much in common with?"
"You drift apart," suggested Muriel with the appropriate dreamy look.
"They change," said Gloria. "All the qualities that they don't use in their daily lives get cobwebbed up."
"The last thing he said to me," recollected Anthony, "was that he was going to work so as to forget that there was nothing worth working for."