“There is no doubt also,” said Lionel, “that the demoralisation of our past Society was greatly caused by that misinterpreted activity which in a great sense led to artificiality and deception. No proper time was allowed for development; we had clothed art, clothed charity, clothed education; and in every branch of industry and artistic pursuit the fruit had to be picked ere it was ripe. The weighty question of pauperism was settled over the tea-cups when a bazaar organised by fashionable women had realised fifty pounds; the last word of realistic art had been said when a well-known sculptor had put the final touch to his statue of a ballet dancer, by sticking on the skirt a flounce of real gold lace. As to education, it was to be imbibed, as air is pumped into a rubber tyre, strongly and promptly, so as to lose no time, for the next race was at hand and we had to start, even if we punctured on the road.”
“No one knows this better than I do,” said Gwen. “We were never taught the true value of anything or of anyone; we believed to have fathomed all things when we had seen the small sides of them, and human beings were only what they appeared to us relatively. I must say that the most difficult people to deal with at present are some of the mothers in Society. It is not that they mind, materially, this state of nature; I suppose they are making up their minds to it, and Lady Pendelton still repeats that a lady can always behave like one wherever she is placed and whatever happens.”
“Yes,” added Eva, “but my mother is convinced that it is the diffusion of classes that will bring our world to a tragic end.”
Eva suddenly stopped talking, and blushes covered her soft white cheek. She turned to Gwen.
“Darling, is that Ronald Sinclair standing near the Rotunda?”
“Yes, dearie, it is he; and George Murray is coming up to him with Lelia Dale. They have seen us.”
Sinclair, accompanied by his two friends, walked towards our group and was the first to speak.
“Have you heard, Lionel, that the manager of the Olympus is forced to close the doors of his theatre?”
“I expected that would soon happen,” murmured Danford.
“It was inevitable,” answered Lionel; “when music of that kind lies shivering without its usual toggeries, it must perish; for when crotchets and semi-quavers do not any longer help to pin a scarf or lift up suggestively the corner of a laced petticoat, comic opera has lost its meaning.”