other emotion.

And this self-restriction--especially when you can't hear what she is
singing about, which is not seldom--leads more quickly to the wrinkles
of perplexity than even does the problem of how to circumvent the
culinary soarings of Mrs. Beaton, and yet obtain the same results . . .
with eggs at the price they are! If some producing genius had not
conceived the idea of ending off nearly every musical-comedy song with
a dance, and yet another genius of equally enviable parts had not
created the beauty chorus, I don't know how many a prima donna of the
lighter stage would ever be able to get through her own numbers. For,
to dance at the end of her little ditty, and to have the chorus girls
relieve her of further action at the end of the first verse, brings as
great a relief to her as well as to the audience, as do his trouser
pockets to the young man who makes-believe to love her for ever and for
ever . . . and then some, on the stage.

And, because we have taken the well-dressed "poker" as our ideal of
masculine "good form" in society, English men and women always seem to
exude an atmosphere of "slouching" indifference to everything except
their God--and football. It has such a very chilling effect upon
exuberant foreigners when they run up against it. Emotionally, I am
sure we are as developed as any other nation . . . look at our poetry,
for example! But we have so long denied the right to express it, that
we have forgotten how it should be done.

"_I shall love you on and on . . . throughout life; after death; until
the end of eternity . . . !_" declares the impassioned Englishman, the
while he carelessly shakes the dead-end off his cigarette on to
somebody else's carpet.

"_And for you, Egbert, the world will be only too well lost. I will
willingly die with you . . . at any time most convenient to yourself,_"
answers his equally-impassioned mistress, gently replacing an errant
kiss-curl behind her left ear.

Well, I suppose it does take another Englishman to realise that these
two are preparing for a _crime passionel_. But a simple foreigner,
more used to the violence of the "movies" in everyday life than we are,
might be excused if he merely believed them to be protesting a
preference for prawns in aspic over prawns without.

Not, however, that it really matters . . . so long as the lovers, like
Maisie, "get right there" at the finish. For, after all, does not
passion mostly end in the sam