"You weren't. You were a little pest."
"I think it's so remembering and marvellous of you to know what I was like," she said. "I thought you were most frightfully grown-up and dull. In fact, I was rather hazy about you till I saw you tonight, and then, of course, it all came back to me. You haven't altered a bit."
"You know, you have a real talent for small-talk," said Hugh. "Sorry I can't return your compliment!"
"Sorry?" repeated Vicky, raising a pair of startled eyes to his face. "But don't you think I'm much, much prettier now? Everyone else does!"
"You wouldn't be so bad if you hadn't plastered so much make-up on your face," he replied coolly.
"Ah, yes!" she said, recovering her balance in a flash. "I thought you were rather the sort of man who'd prefer a violet by a mossy stone. Probably I shall be putting on that act one day."
He regarded her from under brows lifted in faint surprise. "Is your incredible life a series of "acts"?" he inquired.
"Yes. Didn't you know?"
"I couldn't believe it. Don't you find it a pretty rotten way of living?"
"How silly! Of course not!" she said scornfully. "Life seems to me a most frightfully overrated business, and practically always dull, if you stay the same person every day. On the other hand, you can't be dull if you're always somebody else."