Such talk as had flourished between the two girls had not yet penetrated beyond the barrier where triviality ceases, and past dances, with keen criticism on their merits, and dances to come, and the adequacy of various partners (among whom Peter’s name flitted by like blowing thistledown) had been flashed on and off the public plate. There had been a little longer exposure for the projected party at which the Russian ballet were to supply the entertainment, and Nellie had been informed, with horrified eagerness on the part of Silvia, that, of course, she had been bidden: the invitation had only been inscribed that afternoon. Her acceptance of it was equally “of course,” and with the luck that attended friends, the date of it was a clear two days before her marriage. Trivial though it had all been, she felt that the Hamadryad (herself) had been doing spade-work in the shade. The ground was cleared and levelled; every topic that she might now wish to work up into a more elaborate tapestry had been put in on tentative threads, much as characters in a decently-written drama, flit, at any rate, across the stage in the first act. The two, delightfully grouped, hatless, and secure from interruption, had come to anchor in the circular shade of an old thorn-bush not far from the edge of reeds that fringed the pond. The red petals of the spent blossom dropped down from time to time; the hum and murmur of June woods was a carpet on which more intimate conversation could lightly spread itself. Nellie drew up and clasped her knees. “Fancy my impertinence in dragging you out to Richmond Park when I know that you had a hundred things that you wanted to do,” she said. “Tell me, what would you have done if I hadn’t appeared like some bird of prey and clawed you? Now don’t say that you would have had tea with your mother and gone for a drive in the Park. If you do, I simply shan’t believe you.” Yes, she was more dazzling, so Silvia found, when there was no one to contrast her with. The sheer, silly, conventional tittle-tattle took a sparkling quality quite alien to it when it came from her mouth. Her personality was like coloured lights playing on a fountain and turning the drops to gems. “I must be silent, then,” she said. “Oh, don’t be silent! When people are silent it means they are only being polite. If they were less polite they would say that they were excruciatingly bored. Then, after a suitable silence, they say, ‘How charming it is here!’ Don’t say ‘how charming it is here.’ That will be the last straw, Silvia. Dear me, I said ‘Silvia’ by accident. It--what they call--slipped out.” “Oh, do say it on purpose, then,” said Silvia.