"Ovid was born too early: he never knew this admirable illustration!"
"There's only one thing worse than inviting people without the people they care about; it is to invite them with the people they're tired of: I did that once last year. I asked Madame de Saumur and Gervase together, and then found that they had broken with each other two months before. That is the sort of blunder I do hate to make!"
"Well, nothing happened?"
"Of course nothing happened. Nobody ever shows anything. But it looks so stupid in me: one is always expected to know——"
"What an increase to the responsibilities of a hostess! She must know all the ins and outs of her acquaintances' unlawful affections as a Prussian officer knows the French by-roads! How simple an affair it used to be when the Victorian reign was young, and Lord and Lady So-and-So and Mr. and Mrs. Nobody all came to stay for a week in twos and twos as inevitably as we buy fancy pigeons in pairs!"
"You pretend to regret those days, but you know you'd be horribly bored if you had always to go out with me."
"Politeness would require me to deny, but truthfulness would compel me to assent."
"Of course it would. You don't want anybody with you who has heard all your best stories a thousand times, and knows what your doctor has told you not to eat; I don't want anybody who has seen how I look when I'm ill, and knows where my false hair is put on. It is quite natural. By the way, Boom says Ovid's ladies had perukes, too, as one of them put her wig on upside down before him, and it chilled his feelings towards her; it would chill most people's. I wonder if they made them well in those days, and what they cost."
"I think you might have invited some of the husbands."
"Oh, dear, no. Why? They're all staying somewhere else."