‘I don’t know,’ Westlake affected dubiousness.  ’I have heard that a step to the riddle is gained by a serious contemplation of boys.’

‘Serious?’

‘That is the doubt.’

‘The doubt throws its light on the step!’

‘I advise them not to take any leap from their step,’ said Lady Pennon.

’It would be a way of learning that we are no wiser than our sires; but perhaps too painful a way,’ Whitmonby observed.  ’Poor Mountford Wilts boasted of knowing women; and—­he married.  To jump into the mouth of the enigma, is not to read it.’

‘You are figures of conceit when you speculate on us, Mr. Whitmonby.’

‘An occupation of our leisure, my lady, for your amusement.’

’The leisure of the humming-top, a thousand to the minute, with the pretence that it sleeps!’ Diana said.

’The sacrilegious hand to strip you of your mystery is withered as it stretches,’ exclaimed Westlake.  ’The sage and the devout are in accord for once.’

’And whichever of the two I may be, I’m one of them, happy to do my homage blindfold!’ Sullivan Smith waved the sign of it.

Diana sent her eyes over him and Mr. Hepburn, seeing Dacier.  ’That rosy mediaevalism seems the utmost we can expect.’  An instant she saddened, foreboding her words to be ominous, because of suddenly thirsting for a modern cry from him, the silent.  She quitted her woman’s fit of earnestness, and took to the humour that pleased him.  ’Aslauga’s knight, at his blind man’s buff of devotion, catches the hem of the tapestry and is found by his lady kissing it in a trance of homage five hours long!  Sir Hilary of Agincourt, returned from the wars to his castle at midnight, hears that the chitellaine is away dancing, and remains with all his men mounted in the courtyard till the grey morn brings her back!  Adorable!  We had a flag flying in those days.  Since men began to fret the riddle, they have hauled it down half-mast.  Soon we shall behold a bare pole and hats on around it.  That is their solution.’

A smile circled at the hearing of Lady Singleby say:  ’Well, I am all for our own times, however literal the men.’

‘We are two different species!’ thumped Lady Pennon, swimming on the theme.  ‘I am sure, I read what they write of women!  And their heroines!’

Lady Esquart acquiesced:  ‘We are utter fools or horrid knaves.’

’Nature’s original hieroglyphs—­which have that appearance to the peruser,’ Westlake assented.

’And when they would decipher us, and they hit on one of our “arts,” the literary pirouette they perform is memorable.’  Diana looked invitingly at Dacier.  ‘But I for one discern a possible relationship and a likeness.’

‘I think it exists—­behind a curtain,’ Dacier replied.

’Before the era of the Nursery.  Liberty to grow; independence is the key of the secret.’

‘And what comes after the independence?’ he inquired.