‘Us three?’ asked Milton, in an attempt to evade the issue. He could tell from the set of Mrs Hillier’s back that in another minute or two they might be at grips with the problem of Empire.

‘No,’ said Miss Pym, still more wildly, ‘I mean us all, our class …’

Mrs Hillier stared at her, then decided to laugh. ‘I didn’t know you were a Socialist!’

‘But must one be a Socialist,’ went on Miss Pym defiantly, ‘to wonder sometimes what is the good of us? Because one can’t help it (without wishing to attach oneself to any party) these days, when so much is in the melting-pot.’

‘It’s hardly easy to talk about, is it?’ said Mrs Hillier lightly, with the same well-bred instinct to cover this that she had when anybody tried to discuss religious experiences (though at present, with the excuse of a specialist, that would have been more permissible). ‘I suppose,’ she elected to say, ‘it’s a matter of example, really, isn’t it? I mean, giving the others something to go by. I mean, people do notice. Why, one feels it even out here – Italians notice.’

‘But don’t you wonder if they don’t just think we’re lazy?’ Miss Pym exploded. ‘I do: when my friend and I have been walking or reading and one feels them up on those terraces looking down on one and working away. Why, even in the Hotel, you know, one does wonder if the waiters——’

‘You’re just getting acutely self-conscious, Miss Pym, that’s what’s the matter with you,’ laughed Mrs Hillier, bluntly and kindly. ‘The creatures are positive parasites. If you’d lived out of England as long as I have, and seen how——’

‘ – I’ve lived all over the Continent——’

‘ – Oh, but that’s different. I mean, that just tends to make one cosmopolitan.’

‘Yes, but that’s just it——’ cried Miss Pym, then subsided, thoroughly confused.