ups and coteries! If anybody is a Georgian we are all Georgians
together. I am a Georgian, if it comes to that."

"Why not? But Lady Sellingworth is definitely not one."

"How so? I must deny that, really. I know these young poets and painters
like to imagine that everyone who has had the great honour of living
under Queen Victoria--"

"Forgive me! It isn't that at all."

"Well, then--oh, our dry Martinis! How much is it, waiter?"

"Two shillings, sir."

"Two--thank you. Well, then, Craven, I affirm that Lady Sellingworth is
as much a Georgian as any young person who writes bad poetry in Cheyne
Walk or paints impossible pictures in Glebe Place."

"She would deny that. She said, in my presence and in that of Sir
Seymour Portman and Miss Van Tuyn, that she did not belong to this age."

"What an--what an extraordinary statement!" said Braybrooke, drinking
down his second cocktail at a gulp.

"She said she was--or rather, had been--an Edwardian. She would not have
it that she belonged to the present day at all."

"A whim! It must have been a whim! The best of women are subject to
caprice. It is the greatest mistake to class yourself as belonging to
the past. It dates you. It--it--it practically inters you!"

"I think she meant that her glory was Edwardian, that her real life was
then. I don't think she chooses to realize how immensely attractive she
is now in the Georgian days."

"Well, I really can't understand such a view. I shall--when I meet
her--I shall really venture to remonstrate with her about it. And
besides, apart from the personal question, one owes something to one's
contemporaries. Upon my word, I begin to understand at last why certain
very charming women haven't a good word to say for Adela Sellingworth."

"You mean the 'old guard,' I suppose?"

"I don't wish to mention any names. It is always a mistake to mention
names. One cannot guard against it too carefully. But having done what
she did ten years ago dear Adela Sellingworth should really--but it is
not for me to criticise her. Only there is nothing people--women--are
more sensitive about than the question of age. No one likes to be laid
on the shelf. Adela Sellingworth has chosen to--well--one might feel
such a very drastic step to be quite uncalled for--quite uncalled for.
And so--but you haven't told me! Did Adela Sellingworth allow herself to
be persuaded to go to the Cafe Royal?"

"No, she didn't."

"Thank God for that!" said the