“I read somewhere that Victorian things are fashionable again.”
“So they are, but with a difference. And anyway I think it’s a stupid fashion. Sometimes,” said Henry, “I wonder if there is such a thing as beauty.”
“Isn’t it supposed to exist only in the eye of the beholder?”
“I won’t take that. There are eyes and eyes. Fashion addles any true conception of beauty. There’s something inherently vulgar in fashion.”
“And yet,” said Roberta, “if Frid dressed herself up like a belle of 1929 you wouldn’t much care to be seen with her.”
“She’d only be putting her fashion back eleven years.”
“Well, what do you want? Nudism? Or bags tied round the middle?”
“You are unanswerable,” said Henry. “All the same…” and he expounded his ideas of fashion, giving Roberta cause to marvel at his detachment.
The taxi bucketed along Park Lane and presently turned into a decorous side-street where the noise of London was muffled and the rows of great, uniform houses seemed fast asleep.
“Here we are,” Henry said. “I think I’ve enough to pay the taxi. How much is it? Ah yes, I can just do it with the tip. So that’s all hotsy-totsy. Come on.”