himself.] Oh! Mother!

[He goes out quickly unnoticed by IMOGEN.]

IMOGEN.

She has turned the corner, Sir Colin. Did you see her? Why, where is he?

[VALENTINE enters. She does not see him.]

VALENTINE WHITE.

Good-bye, Imogen. [She turns to him.]

IMOGEN.

Ah! [Falteringly.] Why will you go away, Val?

VALENTINE WHITE.

You know my craze. Everything in this country is so stuck-up.

IMOGEN.

Mamma's not--stuck-up, as you call it.

VALENTINE WHITE.

Her gowns frighten me. My first recollection of anything is Aunt Kitty
in a print-skirt at a wash-tub.

IMOGEN.

Hush! don't, Val!

VALENTINE WHITE.

There now! you're horrified!

IMOGEN.

One doesn't wish everybody to know.

VALENTINE WHITE.

Then that's being stuck-up, Imogen.

IMOGEN.

Then we differ.

VALENTINE WHITE.

Of course. Everybody does differ from me in this stuck-up country. Wish
me good-bye.

IMOGEN.

[Looking away.] I presume my brother Brooke is stuck-up also?

VALENTINE WHITE.

Well, he appears to have fallen into the starch after that wash of Aunt
Kitty's.

IMOGEN.

Indeed. And papa?

VALENTINE WHITE.

Oh, of course, he's ironed out by the House of Commons.

IMOGEN.

How very rude! [Laying her hand on his arm.] And am I--altered, Val?

VALENTINE WHITE.

Altered! The change is heart-breaking!

IMOGEN.

Oh, how cruel!

VALENTINE WHITE.

Altered! Where are the tiny tea-things with which you once played at
making tea in your old school-room? Where is the hoop you used to
trundle in Portman Square--the skipping-rope Brooke and I turned for you
till our arms nearly dropped from our shoulders? Where are the marbles I
gave you--the top I taught you to spin? I say, where are these things
and the jolly little girl who delighted in them?

IMOGEN.

[With much dignity.] I think you're so violent that it isn't safe to
speak to you. But I'll ask you one question.

VALENTINE WHITE.

Pray do.

IMOGEN.

Where is the good-tempered, curly-headed boy for whom I used to make the
tea; the boy who taught me, very patiently, how to play the marbles and
to spin the top?

VALENTINE WHITE.

You see him.

IMOGEN.

Oh, no. No, Val, no.

VALENTINE WHITE.

Imogen! You don't mean, at any rate, that I'm stuck-up?

IMOGEN.

No, indeed, I think you're shockingly stuck-down. [He turns away,
hanging his head. She comes to him.] There, now I've made you ashamed of
yourself.

VALENTINE WHITE.

No, you ha