"Wish I'd heard her. Here am I playing Saul without a David. Many people
there?"

"Several. Lady Cardington--"

"That white-haired enchantress! There's a Niobe--weeping not for her
children, she never had any, but for her youth. She is the religion of
half Mayfair, though I don't know whether she's got a religion. Men who
wouldn't look at her when she was sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-six,
worship her now she's sixty. And she weeps for her youth! Who else?"

"Mrs. Wolfstein."

"A daughter of Israel; coarse, intelligent, brutal to her reddened
finger-tips. I'd trust her to judge a singer, actor, painter, writer. But
I wouldn't trust her with my heart or half a crown."

"Lady Manby."

"Humour in petticoats. She's so infernally full of humour that there's no
room in her for anything else. I doubt if she's got lungs. I'm sure she
hasn't got a heart or a brain."

"But if she is so full of humour," said Sir Donald mildly, "how does
she--?"

"How does a great writer fail over an addition sum? How does a man who
speaks eight languages talk imbecility in them all? How is it that a bird
isn't an angel? I wish to Heaven we knew. Well, Robin?"