d the
parliamentary allusion.

When at last, under pretence of being tired, she was able to escape to
her room, she felt that another five minutes would have turned her
brain.

Sunday dawned, and with it the old panorama of iterations unfolded
itself: Mr. Bolton's velvet coat and fez, Mr. Cordal's carpet slippers
with the fur tops, Mrs. Barnes' indecision, Mr. Sefton's genial and
romantic optimism, Miss Sikkum's sumptuary excesses; all presented
themselves in due sequence just as they had done for--"was it
centuries?" Patricia asked herself. To crown all it was a roast-pork
Sunday, and the reek of onions preparing for the seasoning filled the
house.

Patricia felt that the fates were fighting against her. In nerving
herself for the usual human Sunday ordeal, she had forgotten the
vegetable menace, in other words that it was "pork Sunday." Mr. Bolton
was always more than usually trying on Sundays; but reinforced by
onions he was almost unbearable. Patricia fled.

It was the Sunday before August Bank Holiday. Patricia shuddered at
the remembrance. It meant that people were away. She did not pause to
think that her world was at home, pursuing its various paths whereby to
cultivate an appetite worthy of the pork that was even then sizzling in
the Galvin House kitchen under the eagle eye of the cook, who prided
herself on her "crackling," which Galvin House crunched with noisy
gusto.

Patricia sank down upon a chair far back under the trees opposite the
Stanhope Gate. Here she remained in a vague way watching the people,
yet unconscious of their presence. From time to time some snatch of
meaningless conversation would reach her. "You know Betty's such a
sport?" one man said to another. Patricia found herself wondering what
Betty was like and what, to the speaker's mind, constituted being a
sport. Was Betty pretty? She must be, Patricia decided; no one cared
whether or no a plain girl were a sport. She found herself wanting to
know Betty. What were the lives of all these people, these shadows,
that were moving to and fro in front of her, each intent upon something
that seemed of vital importance? Were they----?

"I doubt if Cassandra could have looked more gloomily prophetic."

She turned with a start and saw Geoffrey Elton smiling down upon her.

"Did I look as bad as that?" she enquired, as he took a seat beside her.

"You looked as if you were gratuitously settling the destinies of the
world," h