“But, hang it all, man, how do you know till you’ve tried?” Dicky put a little worldly authority into his tone as he proceeded. “You mustn’t mind my saying it to you—it is you who make your own desert, as you call it, for yourself. If you say in advance that you know you won’t like this sort of person, or that, how are you ever going to form any friendships?”
Christian received the remonstrance with meekness. “You do not quite understand me,” he said, amiably enough. “I have some work to do in the world, and I don’t think that actresses and actors would help me much to do it. The young men who run after them do not seem, somehow, to do much else. It is only a prejudice I have; it applies only to myself. If others feel differently, why, I have not a word to say.”
“No, you must come!” Westland declared, rising. “It’s nonsense for you not to see that side of things. My dear fellow, it’s as respectable as the Royal Academy—or Madame Tussaud’s. Are you dining anywhere? Then I’ll run home and dress, and I’ll drive round here for you. We’ll dine together, and then look in at some of the halls. Shall I say seven? It gives us more time over our dinner.”
Christian accepted, with a rueful little smile, his committal to the enterprise. “You must not mind if I come away early,” he said, getting to his feet in turn.
The other laughed at him. “My dear man, you’ll never want to come away at all. But no, seriously—it’s just the kind of thing you want. It’ll amuse you, for one thing—and deuce take it, you’ll be young only once in your life. But more than that—here you are swearing that you’ll do no more social work at all, and you don’t know in the least what other resources are open to you. It isn’t alone actresses that you meet at a place like this, but all sorts of clever people who know how to get what there is out of life. That is what you yourself want to do, isn’t it? Well, it’ll do you no harm, to say the least, to see how they go about it.”
“Very likely,” Christian replied, as the other turned. “I will be ready at seven.” He followed him to the door, and into the hallway. “Mind,” he said, half jokingly, half gravely, as he leaned over the banister, “I have not altogether promised. When midnight comes, I may lose my courage altogether.”
“Ah, it’s that kind of timidity that storms every fortress in its path,” Dicky called up to him from the stairway.