"As a function," resumed Reginald, "the Academy is a
failure."

"You think it would be tolerable without the pictures?"

"The pictures are all right, in their way; after all, one can
always LOOK at them if one is bored with one's surroundings,
or wants to avoid an imminent acquaintance."

"Even that doesn't always save one. There is the inevitable
female whom you met once in Devonshire, or the Matoppo Hills,
or somewhere, who charges up to you with the remark that it's
funny how one always meets people one knows at the Academy.
Personally, I DON'T think it funny."

"I suffered in that way just now," said Reginald plaintively,
"from a woman whose word I had to take that she had met me
last summer in Brittany."

"I hope you were not too brutal?"

"I merely told her with engaging simplicity that the art of
life was the avoidance of the unattainable."

"Did she try and work it out on the back of her catalogue?"

"Not there and then. She murmured something about being 'so
clever.' Fancy coming to the Academy to be clever!"

"To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining