me; nor was it part of
his scheme of life to effect her physical and moral regeneration. . . .
And it was now the moment to begin dressing.

Mrs. Shelley's house lay between Sloane Square and the river; and Eric
arrived punctually to find her insipidly grateful to him for coming. A
self-conscious Chelsea party was assembling; there were two war-poets,
whose "Trench Songs" and "Emancipation," compensating want of finish
with violence of feeling, had made thoughtless critics wonder whether
the Great War would engender a new Elizabethan splendour of genius;
there was Mrs. Manisty, who claimed young poets as of right and helped
them to parturition in the pages of the _Utopia Review_; there was a
flamboyant, short-haired young woman who had launched on the world a
war-emergency code of sex-morals under the guise of a novel; there were
three bashful aliens suspected of being pianists and one self-assured
journalist who told Mrs. Shelley with suitable heartiness that he had
not _met_ Mr. Lane, but of course he knew his _work_ and went on to ask
Eric if he was engaged on a new "work." The flamboyant woman, Eric
observed, talked much of "creation" and its antecedent labour; the
trench poets, with professional modesty, referred to their "stuff." A
fourth alien entered and was greeted and introduced in halting French,
to which he replied in rapid and faultless English.

Eric looked round on a triumph of ill-assortment. He came here partly
out of old friendship for his hostess, but chiefly for fear of seeming
to avoid a section of society which at least took itself seriously.
There was no question of a Byronic descent on Chelsea; these people
would ever cringe before the face of success and disparage behind its
back, as they had always done; they made a suburb and called it a
school. For ten years Eric had listened to their theories and
discoveries; after ten years he was still waiting for achievement. The
very house, with its "art" shades of upholstery, its hammered brass
fenders, its wooden nooks and angles filled with ramshackle bookcases,
hard seats and inadequately stuffed cushions, was artificial; it was
make-believe, pretentious, insincere. . . .

"Lady Barbara Neave."

There was a rustle of excitement, the more noticeable against the
conscientious effort of several not to seem interested. Eric smiled to
himself, as the young journalist, interrupted in his discourse on "the
aristocracy of illiterates," watched Barbara's