must betray him to his friends; but Cecily had none of these
awkwardnesses. She behaved as easily as if the scene with Henry had not
taken place. "You'd think she hadn't any feelings," he murmured to
himself, and as he did so, it seemed to him that in that moment he knew
Cecily, knew her once and for all. _She had no feelings, no particular
feelings for any one, not even for Gilbert._ She was a beautiful animal,
eager for emotional diversions, but indifferent to the creature that
pleased her after it had pleased her. If Henry were to quit her now and
never return to her, she might some day say, "I wonder where poor Paddy
is!" and turn carelessly to a new lover; but that would be all. Gilbert
had piqued her, perhaps, but he had done no more than that, though
probably it was more than Henry could ever hope to do, and she had
yawned a little with the tedium of waiting for him, and then had decided
to yawn no more....

He fell among platitudes. "Like a butterfly," he said to himself. "Just
like a damned butterfly!"

Well, he thought, mentally cooler because of his revelation, that is an
attitude towards life that has many advantages. One might call Cecily a
stoical amorist, an erotic philosopher. "Love where you can, and don't
bother where you can't!" might serve her for a motto. "And, really,
that's rather a good way of getting through these plaguey emotions of
ours!" he told himself. "Only," he went on, "you can't walk in that way
just because you think it's a good one!"

He sat between Lady Cecily and Mary at supper, but he did not talk a
great deal to either of them, for Mary was chattering excitedly to Sir
Geoffrey Mundane, and Cecily was persuading Ninian that engineering had
always been the passion of her life. "I quite agree," she was saying, "a
Channel Tunnel would be very useful and ... and so convenient, too.
I've often said that to Jimphy, but dear Jimphy doesn't pretend to
understand these things!" She had turned to him once and, in a whisper,
had said, "Which of you is in love with Mary?" but he had pretended to
be wooden and hard of understanding.

"My dear Paddy," she said, raising her eyebrows, "I believe you're
sulking ... just because I wouldn't run away with you. You're as bad as
Gilbert!"

"You're perfectly brutal," he said under his breath.

"Aren't you exaggerating?" she replied. "And if I had gone off with you,
we'd have missed this nice supper. Do be sociable, there's a dear Paddy,
and perhap