"He had one fault," she said. "His good women were mawkish fools; his villainesses splendidly lovable. It was the spirit of the age, no doubt, that to be good one must be a mere loving nonentity, that brains led the feminine world to destruction."
If the world would but hang out warnings to the blind mortals who scurry through its maze, seeking for openings, or shouting, laughing, as they go; if we knew that an hour hence our life's history would change, and that a refusal to go to lunch, a turning up one corner instead of another, would leave it as it was, would it be better for us?
If Bertie Carteret, talking eagerly, almost boyishly, with a new interest in words, had realized that the turnstile of the Exhibition was taking him into a land of pain and regret, would he have seen the warning, laughed, or turned back? He had passed through it now; his feet were set on the path.
They drank tea out of blue-and-white Japanese cups, with sight-seers all round them. Esmé would have shuddered at the place, absolutely refused to take tea with milk in it, and with such impossible people about her.
Estelle enjoyed it; the day was still theirs as they dined at the same little restaurant with the same waiter, his memory sharpened by Bertie's surreptitiously large tip, rushing to find a table for them.
Weariness made economy less rigid; the little dinner they picked out was simple, but not for poor people. Since men in morning coats may not appear in respectably expensive seats, they climbed high at a theatre, looking down at the stage far below them; the brilliant mass of colour in the stalls; the rows of perfectly-dressed women's heads; of men's—sleek and generally thin of hair. Parties strolled into boxes, late for half an act, carelessly looking at the play on the stage.
"There's Esmé! See!"
Esmé came into one of the larger boxes with Dollie Gresham, Jimmie Gore Helmsley; a couple of soldiers; and then at the last, pretty Sybil Chauntsey, gesticulating as she ran in, everyone laughing at something she said.
"I wish"—Bertie looked gravely at the group—"that Sybil Chauntsey would keep away from that Helmsley man. He's no child's guide."
It was Jimmie's party. He had telephoned to Esmé to chaperone it. They were supping at the Ritz afterwards. Little Sybil had been engaged; she had run in telling them of her many difficulties before she could get away. At a small dance to-night one man would look for a partner who would never come.