“Astonishing!” she exclaimed at last.  “What sort of shape can she think her body is?” This remark was called forth by a lady who came past them, waddling rather than walking, and leaning on the arm of a stout man with globular green eyes set in a fat white face.  Some support was necessary, for she was very stout, and so compressed that the upper part of her body hung considerably in advance of her feet, which could only trip in tiny steps, owing to the tightness of the skirt round her ankles.  The dress itself consisted of a small piece of shiny yellow satin, adorned here and there indiscriminately with round shields of blue and green beads made to imitate hues of a peacock’s breast.  On the summit of a frothy castle of hair a purple plume stood erect, while her short neck was encircled by a black velvet ribbon knobbed with gems, and golden bracelets were tightly wedged into the flesh of her fat gloved arms.  She had the face of an impertinent but jolly little pig, mottled red under a dusting of powder.

St. John could not join in Helen’s laughter.

“It makes me sick,” he declared.  “The whole thing makes me sick. . . .  Consider the minds of those people—­their feelings.  Don’t you agree?”

“I always make a vow never to go to another party of any description,” Helen replied, “and I always break it.”

She leant back in her chair and looked laughingly at the young man.  She could see that he was genuinely cross, if at the same time slightly excited.

“However,” he said, resuming his jaunty tone, “I suppose one must just make up one’s mind to it.”

“To what?”

“There never will be more than five people in the world worth talking to.”

Slowly the flush and sparkle in Helen’s face died away, and she looked as quiet and as observant as usual.

“Five people?” she remarked.  “I should say there were more than five.”

“You’ve been very fortunate, then,” said Hirst.  “Or perhaps I’ve been very unfortunate.”  He became silent.

“Should you say I was a difficult kind of person to get on with?” he asked sharply.

“Most clever people are when they’re young,” Helen replied.

“And of course I am—­immensely clever,” said Hirst.  “I’m infinitely cleverer than Hewet.  It’s quite possible,” he continued in his curiously impersonal manner, “that I’m going to be one of the people who really matter.  That’s utterly different from being clever, though one can’t expect one’s family to see it,” he added bitterly.

Helen thought herself justified in asking, “Do you find your family difficult to get on with?”