she has been through.
I thought it would be doing her a kindness to arrange a supper party for
her on her first night."

There was a moment's silence. Yeovil said nothing, and Joan understood
the value of being occasionally tongue-tied.

"The whole question is," continued Cicely, as the silence became
oppressive, "whether one is to mope and hold aloof from the national
life, or take our share in it; the life has got to go on whether we
participate in it or not. It seems to me to be more patriotic to come
down into the dust of the marketplace than to withdraw oneself behind
walls or beyond the seas."

"Of course the industrial life of the country has to go on," said Yeovil;
"no one could criticise Gorla if she interested herself in organising
cottage industries or anything of that sort, in which she would be
helping her own people. That one could understand, but I don't think a
cosmopolitan concern like the music-hall business calls for personal
sacrifices from young women of good family at a moment like the present."

"It is just at a moment like the present that the people want something
to interest them and take them out of themselves," said Cicely
argumentatively; "what has happened, has happened, and we can't undo it
or escape the consequences. What we can do, or attempt to do, is to make
things less dreary, and make people less unhappy."

"In a word, more contented," said Yeovil; "if I were a German statesman,
that is the end I would labour for and encourage others to labour for, to
make the people forget that they were discontented. All this work of
regalvanising the social side of London life may be summed up in the
phrase 'travailler pour le roi de Prusse.'"

"I don't think there is any use in discussing the matter further," said
Cicely.

"I can see that grand supper-party not coming off," said Joan
provocatively.

Ronnie looked anxiously at Cicely.

"You can see it coming on, if you're gifted with prophetic vision of a
reliable kind," said Cicely; "of course as Murrey doesn't take kindly to
the idea of Gorla's enterprise I won't have the party here. I'll give it
at a restaurant, that's all. I can see Murrey's point of view, and
sympathise with it, but I'm not going to throw Gorla over."

There was another pause of uncomfortably protracted duration.

"I say, this is a top-hole omelette," said Ronnie.

It was his only contribution to the conversation, but it was a valuable
one.

CHA