ng other topics. He addressed
himself chiefly to Goopes, and spoke as if in reply to long-sustained
inquiries on the part of Goopes into the personnel of the Marylebone
Borough Council. "If you were to ask me," he would say, "I should say
Blinders is straight. An ordinary type, of course--"

Mrs. Dunstable's contributions to the conversation were entirely in the
form of nods; whenever Alderman Dunstable praised or blamed she nodded
twice or thrice, according to the requirements of his emphasis. And
she seemed always to keep one eye on Ann Veronica's dress. Mrs.
Goopes disconcerted the Alderman a little by abruptly challenging the
roguish-looking young man in the orange tie (who, it seemed, was the
assistant editor of New Ideas) upon a critique of Nietzsche and Tolstoy
that had appeared in his paper, in which doubts had been cast upon the
perfect sincerity of the latter. Everybody seemed greatly concerned
about the sincerity of Tolstoy.

Miss Miniver said that if once she lost her faith in Tolstoy's
sincerity, nothing she felt would really matter much any more, and she
appealed to Ann Veronica whether she did not feel the same; and Mr.
Goopes said that we must distinguish between sincerity and irony, which
was often indeed no more than sincerity at the sublimated level.

Alderman Dunstable said that sincerity was often a matter of
opportunity, and illustrated the point to the fair young man with an
anecdote about Blinders on the Dust Destructor Committee, during which
the young man in the orange tie succeeded in giving the whole discussion
a daring and erotic flavor by questioning whether any one could be
perfectly sincere in love.

Miss Miniver thought that there was no true sincerity except in love,
and appealed to Ann Veronica, but the young man in the orange tie went
on to declare that it was quite possible to be sincerely in love with
two people at the same time, although perhaps on different planes with
each individual, and deceiving them both. But that brought Mrs. Goopes
down on him with the lesson Titian teaches so beautifully in his "Sacred
and Profane Love," and became quite eloquent upon the impossibility of
any deception in the former.

Then they discoursed on love for a time, and Alderman Dunstable, turning
back to the shy, blond young man and speaking in undertones of the
utmost clearness, gave a brief and confidential account of an unfounded
rumor of the bifurcation of the affections of Blinders that