“Don’t mind me,” said Christy. “Only I ought to warn you that Bertram’s a married man. And his wife’s a real lady.”
“That makes the operation safer and more delicate,” said Janet Welford. “Bertram, for old time’s sake? To catch again the fleeting impress of youth’s delight? How say you?”
She offered him her cheek. The invitation could not be refused without default of chivalry, but he was awkward and restrained in his salute.
Janet Welford rubbed her cheek with the back of her hand and said, “Quelle violence! Qu’il est féroce, cet Anglais, et formidable!”
She sat on the arm of the old leather chair, and put her arm round Christy’s neck and her cheek against his cheek, and called him a beautiful pterodactyl, and a most wise old plesiosaurus.
“Don’t you come vamping me too recklessly,” growled Christy, with mock resentment. “I may be ugly, but I’m human.”
“You’re impregnable in virtue,” said Janet Rockingham Welford. “Alas for amorous womanhood in a world of surplus women!”
She sighed deeply, and then pulled Christy’s ears, left the arm of his chair, and sat demurely opposite Bertram.
“Tell me,” she asked, “are you one of Us?”
Bertram enquired in what way, and she explained she meant the Only Way, the Far, Far, Better Way. Was he one of those who had turned their back on an old and wicked world, full of old and wicked men (and women) and marched forward with youth to the New World of equality, brotherhood and universal peace?