Clifford's success. Another feather in the family cap! She didn't care a straw about his books, but why should she?

`Oh, I don't think it's my doing,' said Connie.

`It must be! Can't be anybody else's. And it seems to me you don't get enough out of it.'

`How?'

`Look at the way you are shut up here. I said to Clifford: If that child rebels one day you'll have yourself to thank!'

`But Clifford never denies me anything,' said Connie.

`Look here, my dear child'---and Lady Bennerley laid her thin hand on Connie's arm. `A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. Believe me!' And she took another sip of brandy, which maybe was her form of repentance.

`But I do live my life, don't I?'

`Not in my idea! Clifford should bring you to London, and let you go about. His sort of friends are all right for him, but what are they for you? If I were you I should think it wasn't good enough. You'll let your youth slip by, and you'll spend your old age, and your middle age too, repenting it.'

Her ladyship lapsed into contemplative silence, soothed by the brandy.

But Connie was not keen on going to London, and being steered into the smart world by Lady Bennerley. She didn't feel really smart, it wasn't interesting. And she did feel the peculiar, withering coldness under it all; like the soil of Labrador, which his gay little flowers on its surface, and a foot down is frozen.

Tommy Dukes was at Wragby, and another man, Harry Winterslow, and Jack Strangeways with his wife Olive. The talk was much more desultory than when only the cronies were there, and everybody was a bit bored, for the weather was bad, and there was only billiards, and the pianola to dance to.

Olive was reading a book about the future, when babies would be bred in bottles, and women would be `immunized'.

`Jolly good thing too!' she said. `Then a woman can live her own life.' Strangeways wanted children, and she didn't.

`How'd you like to be immunized?' Winterslow asked her, with an ugly smile.

`I hope I am; naturally,' she said. `Anyhow the future's going to have more sense, and a woman needn't be dragged down by her functions.'

`Perhaps she'll float off into space altogether,' said Dukes.

`I do think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot of the physical disabilities,' said Clifford. `All the love-business for example, it might just as well go. I suppose it would if we could breed babies in bottles.'

`No!' cried Olive. `That might leave all the more room for fun.'

`I suppose,' said Lady Bennerley, contemplatively, `if the love-business went, something else would take its place. Morphia, perhaps. A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everybody.'

`The government releasing ether into the air on Saturdays, for a cheerful weekend!' said Jack. `Sounds all right, but where should we be by Wednesday?'