out and you don't,
so there!"

"I suppose that ours is a female house," said Margaret, "and one must
just accept it. No, Aunt Juley, I don't mean that this house is full of
women. I am trying to say something much more clever. I mean that it
was irrevocably feminine, even in father's time. Now I'm sure you
understand! Well, I'll give you another example. It'll shock you, but
I don't care. Suppose Queen Victoria gave a dinner-party, and that
the guests had been Leighton, Millais, Swinburne, Rossetti, Meredith,
Fitzgerald, etc. Do you suppose that the atmosphere of that dinner would
have been artistic? Heavens, no! The very chairs on which they sat would
have seen to that. So with out house--it must be feminine, and all we
can do is to see that it isn't effeminate. Just as another house that
I can mention, but won't, sounded irrevocably masculine, and all its
inmates can do is to see that it isn't brutal."

"That house being the W's house, I presume," said Tibby.

"You're not going to be told about the W's, my child," Helen cried, "so
don't you think it. And on the other hand, I don't the least mind if
you find out, so don't you think you've done anything clever, in either
case. Give me a cigarette."

"You do what you can for the house," said Margaret. "The drawing-room
reeks of smoke."

"If you smoked too, the house might suddenly turn masculine. Atmosphere
is probably a question of touch and go. Even at Queen Victoria's
dinner-party--if something had been just a little Different--perhaps if
she'd worn a clinging Liberty tea-gown instead of a magenta satin."

"With an India shawl over her shoulders--"

"Fastened at the bosom with a Cairngorm-pin."

Bursts of disloyal laughter--you must remember that they are half
German--greeted these suggestions, and Margaret said pensively, "How
inconceivable it would be if the Royal Family cared about Art." And the
conversation drifted away and away, and Helen's cigarette turned to
a spot in the darkness, and the great flats opposite were sown with
lighted windows which vanished and were refit again, and vanished
incessantly. Beyond them the thoroughfare roared gently--a tide that
could never be quiet, while in the east, invisible behind the smokes of
Wapping, the moon was rising.

"That reminds me, Margaret. We might have taken that young man into
the dining-room, at all events. Only the majolica plate--and that is so
firmly set in the wall. I am really distressed that he