was the life he was going to.  For a boy who went out to it from the dulness of some country rectory, from a neighbourhood where a flower show and a cricket match formed the social landmarks of the year, the feeling of exile might not be very crushing, might indeed be lost in the sense of change and adventure.  But Comus had lived too thoroughly in the centre of things to regard life in a backwater as anything else than stagnation, and stagnation while one is young he justly regarded as an offence against nature and reason, in keeping with the perverted mockery that sends decrepit invalids touring painfully about the world and shuts panthers up in narrow cages.  He was being put aside, as a wine is put aside, but to deteriorate instead of gaining in the process, to lose the best time of his youth and health and good looks in a world where youth and health and good looks count for much and where time never returns lost possessions.  And thus, as the curtain swept down on the close of each act, Comus felt a sense of depression and deprivation sweep down on himself; bitterly he watched his last evening of social gaiety slipping away to its end.  In less than an hour it would be over; in a few months’ time it would be an unreal memory.

In the third interval, as he gazed round at the chattering house, someone touched him on the arm.  It was Lady Veula Croot.

“I suppose in a week’s time you’ll be on the high seas,” she said.  “I’m coming to your farewell dinner, you know; your mother has just asked me.  I’m not going to talk the usual rot to you about how much you will like it and so on.  I sometimes think that one of the advantages of Hell will be that no one will have the impertinence to point out to you that you’re really better off than you would be anywhere else.  What do you think of the play?  Of course one can foresee the end; she will come to her husband with the announcement that their longed-for child is going to be born, and that will smooth over everything.  So conveniently effective, to wind up a comedy with the commencement of someone else’s tragedy.  And every one will go away saying ‘I’m glad it had a happy ending.’”

Lady Veula moved back to her seat, with her pleasant smile on her lips and the look of infinite weariness in her eyes.

The interval, the last interval, was drawing to a close and the house began to turn with fidgetty attention towards the stage for the unfolding of the final phase of the play.  Francesca sat in Serena Golackly’s box listening to Colonel Springfield’s story of what happened to a pigeon-cote in his compound at Poona.  Everyone who knew the Colonel had to listen to that story a good many times, but Lady Caroline had mitigated the boredom of the infliction, and in fact invested it with a certain sporting interest, by offering a prize to the person who heard it oftenest in the course of the Season, the competitors being under an honourable understanding not to lead up to the subject.  Ada Spelvexit and a boy in the Foreign Office were at present at the top of the list with five recitals each to their score, but the former was suspected of doubtful adherence to the rules and spirit of the competition.