Cecilia did not reply. She and a great part of the room were engaged in watching Roger Barnes and Miss Maddison walking together through a space which seemed to have been cleared on purpose for them, but was really the result of a move towards the supper-room.
"Was there ever such a pair?" said an enthusiastic voice behind the General. "Athene and Apollo take the floor!" A gray-haired journalist with a small, bewrinkled face, buried in whiskers, and beard, laid a hand on the General's arm as he spoke.
The General smiled vaguely. "Do you know Mrs. and Miss Maddison?"
"Rather!" said the little man. "Miss Elsie's a wonder! As pretty and soft as they make them, and a Greek scholar besides—took all sorts of honours at Radcliffe last year. I've known her from her cradle."
"What a number of your girls go to college!" said the General, but ungraciously, in the tones of one who no sooner saw an American custom emerging than his instinct was to hit it.
"Yes; it's a feature of our modern life—the life of our women. But not the most significant one, by a long way."
The General could not help a look of inquiry.
The journalist's face changed from gay to grave. "The most significant thing in American life just now——"
"I know!" interrupted the General. "Your divorce laws!"
The journalist shook his head. "It goes deeper than that. What we're looking on at is a complete transformation of the idea of marriage——"