abs guessed what it was; but because, as she had said they three had
paid the price together, he kept her secret. "General Braithwaite,
probably. But you were speaking of Adair?"

Sir Tobias shivered, betraying his nervous tension. "A disturber," he
said irritably, "even in his going. And yet, I suppose it's true; we
shouldn't be sitting here comfortably to-night if it hadn't been for his
sort."

Now that it had been broached, it was anything to avoid the main topic.
He drummed with his fingers on the table, ceased drumming and sighed
heavily. "Yes, I was speaking of Adair. I don't understand him. I've
grown out of touch; I don't seem to understand anybody. I'm left behind,
somehow. People do things to-day that they never used to do. They shout
about things from the house-tops which all my life I've mentioned only
in whispers. Terry does; you heard what she said to-night about never
having been loved and never having had children. The loss of
delicacy----"

"I wouldn't call it a loss of delicacy." Tabs struck a match. "I would
call it a loss of prudishness. We all know that girls are born to be
married and that the best of them long to have children. Why shouldn't
they own it? You owned it long ago when you bought her dolls. The lid is
off false reticences. I hope it stays off; we shall be a much honester
world."

"The lid's off! That's the phrase I was searching for." Sir Tobias leant
forward confidentially. "You haven't been much in England during the
past four years or you'd know how badly the lid is off. You men, when
you were in the trenches, lived above yourselves; but, the moment you
came home on leave, you taught the world that wasn't in khaki how to
live below itself. I could tell you stories----"

"I know." Tabs didn't want to hear those stories. "It was pathetic. Men
tried to steal in a handful of hours all the passionate experiences that
would have come to them beautifully and legitimately over forty years.
It was like snatching from a bargain-counter things that you hadn't time
to pay for. You were young and you were so soon to be snuffed out. The
unthoughtful took desperately what they believed life owed them.
They----"

It was the turn of Sir Tobias to interrupt. "But so did the women--this
Maisie woman, for instance. It was astounding--the women one would least
have expected. All the desires we had caged through the centuries broke
loose--caged with traditions, with public opinion and scriptural