dangled cigarettes from a lower lip, all obviously of the lower
class, including the cigarette; and of other women, sometimes drab,
dragged of breast and carrying children who should have been in bed
hours before; or still others, wandering in pairs, young, painted
and predatory. She was not imaginative, or she could not have
lived so long in Anthony Cardew's house. She never saw, in the long
line waiting outside even the meanest of the little theaters that
had invaded the once sacred vicinity of the Cardew house, the cry of
every human heart for escape from the sordid, the lure of romance,
the call of adventure and the open road.

"I can't believe it," she added.

Lily made a little gesture of half-amused despair.

"Dearest," she said, "I did. And I liked it. Mother, things have
changed a lot in twenty years. Sometimes I think that here, in this
house, you don't realize that--" she struggled for a phrase--"that
things have changed," she ended, lamely. "The social order, and
that sort of thing. You know. Caste." She hesitated. She was
young and inarticulate, and when she saw Grace's face, somewhat
frightened. But she was not old Anthony's granddaughter for nothing.
"This idea of being a Cardew," she went on, "that's ridiculous, you
know. I'm only half Cardew, anyhow. The rest is you, dear, and
it's got being a Cardew beaten by quite a lot."

Mademoiselle was deftly opening the girl's dressing case, but she
paused now and turned. It was to Grace that she spoke, however.

"They come home like that, all of them," she said. "In France also.