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Archie looked at him curiously. “What does it feel like?” he said.

“How can I say? You don’t seem to realise that it feels much the same, in a way, I mean, one kind of life is just as real as another, even if they aren’t all equally comfortable. That is, until you get to primary things like hunger and thirst, and I didn’t feel them when I drove a taxi. Where are we going to-day, by the way?”

“Hurlingham—and there are two dances to-night, remember, the Listers’ and the Blakes’.”

“I don’t know the Listers.”

“What does that matter? A dancing man is never in the way. They tell you to bring ’em along. Don’t be a—a—prude, Tony.”

“I’m not wincing; I only asked. Excuse my country manners. Yes, it is amusing to have a lot of places to go to—like that, and to have people talking smoothly to me. It makes me feel a funny mixture of being older than most, and being awfully young and crude.”

“You don’t look crude,” said Archie critically.

“Is this affair at the Listers' a big one?”

“No, fairly small. A cousin of mine will be there, Pamela Trent; I want you to meet her. She has only just come out she isn’t much more than seventeen, and she is a pretty kid.”

“Pamela Trent? Hold on—is that Lady Trent? a baroness, or something gaudy of that kind—only she isn’t married?”

Brackenridge laughed. “The usual way of putting it is ‘in her own right’—no, she isn’t married, didn’t I say she was only just out? But what do you know about her?”

“I’ve met her, that’s all.”

“Where? Not while I was with you, I’ll swear—besides, she says she hasn’t; I was talking to her about