"Well, rather degrading stunts, if you mean in the smart set. Jump about
on all fours and pick up a woman's umbrella with your teeth, and bark.
Anything else would be easier for you among chic people, where your
brilliancy would count."

"Brilliancy? Oh, thank you! Go on."

"Now, a girl--if you were a girl--"

"Oh yes, if I were a girl! That will be so much more interesting."

"A girl," Miss Macroyd continued, "might do it by posing effectively
for amateur photography. Or doing something original in dramatics or
pantomimics or recitation--but very original, because chic people are
critical. Or if she had a gift for getting up things that would show
other girls off; or suggesting amusements; but that would be rather in
the line of swell people, who are not good at getting up things and are
glad of help."

"I see, I see!" Verrian said, eagerly. But he walked along looking down
at the snow, and not meeting the laughing glance that Miss Macroyd cast
at his face. "Well?"

"I believe that's all," she said, sharply. She added, less sharply: "She
couldn't afford to fail, though, at any point. The fad that fails is
extinguished forever. Will these simple facts do for fiction? Or is it
for somebody in real life you're asking, Mr. Verrian?"

"Oh, for fiction. And thank you very much. Oh, that's rather pretty!"

XIII.

They had come into the meadow where the snow battle was to be, and on
its slope, against the dark weft of the young birch-trees, there was a
mimic castle outlined in the masonry of white blocks quarried from the
drifts and built up in courses like rough blocks of marble. A decoration
of green from the pines that mixed with the birches had been suggested
rather than executed, and was perhaps the more effective for its
sketchiness.

"Yes, it's really beautiful," Miss Macroyd owned, and though she did not
join her cries to those of the other girls, who stood scattered about
admiring it, and laughing and chattering with the men whose applause,
of course, took the jocose form, there was no doubt but she admired it.
"What I can't understand is how Mrs. Westangle got the notion of this.
There's the soprano note in it, and some woman must have given it to
her."

"Not contralto, possibly?" Verrian asked.

"I insist upon the soprano," she said.

But he did not notice what she said. His eyes were following a figure
which seemed to be escaping up through the birches behind the snow
castle and ploughing