“Miss Vinrace,” Arthur answered for her, “has just made a confession; she’d no idea that dances could be so delightful.”
“Yes!” Rachel exclaimed. “I’ve changed my view of life completely!”
“You don’t say so!” Helen mocked. They passed on.
“That’s typical of Rachel,” she said. “She changes her view of life about every other day. D’you know, I believe you’re just the person I want,” she said, as they sat down, “to help me complete her education? She’s been brought up practically in a nunnery. Her father’s too absurd. I’ve been doing what I can—but I’m too old, and I’m a woman. Why shouldn’t you talk to her—explain things to her—talk to her, I mean, as you talk to me?”
“I have made one attempt already this evening,” said St. John. “I rather doubt that it was successful. She seems to me so very young and inexperienced. I have promised to lend her Gibbon.”
“It’s not Gibbon exactly,” Helen pondered. “It’s the facts of life, I think—d’you see what I mean? What really goes on, what people feel, although they generally try to hide it? There’s nothing to be frightened of. It’s so much more beautiful than the pretences—always more interesting—always better, I should say, than that kind of thing.”
She nodded her head at a table near them, where two girls and two young men were chaffing each other very loudly, and carrying on an arch insinuating dialogue, sprinkled with endearments, about, it seemed, a pair of stockings or a pair of legs. One of the girls was flirting a fan and pretending to be shocked, and the sight was very unpleasant, partly because it was obvious that the girls were secretly hostile to each other.
“In my old age, however,” Helen sighed, “I’m coming to think that it doesn’t much matter in the long run what one does: people always go their own way—nothing will ever influence them.” She nodded her head at the supper party.
But St. John did not agree. He said that he thought one could really make a great deal of difference by one’s point of view, books and so on, and added that few things at the present time mattered more than the enlightenment of women. He sometimes thought that almost everything was due to education.
In the ballroom, meanwhile, the dancers were being formed into squares for the lancers. Arthur and Rachel, Susan and Hewet, Miss Allan and Hughling Elliot found themselves together.