“Would you really?” he murmured. She flushed, felt angry she scarce knew why, and put herself swiftly on the defensive. “I would care for the life of any young man. After a million killed it’s precious—and every decent girl would care the same as I.” “You’re wonderful!” he remarked. “I’m common sense incarnate,” said Olivia. “You are. You’re right. You’re right a thousand times,” he replied. “I’ll always remember what you have said to me this morning.” At his surrender she disarmed. A corpulent, opulent couple passed them by, the lady wearing a cheap feathered hat and a rope of pearls outside a Kolinsky coat, the gentleman displaying on an ungloved right hand, which maintained in his mouth a gigantic cigar, an enormous ruby set in a garden border of diamonds. “At any rate,” said Bobby, “I’m not as some other men are.” So they laughed and discussed the profiteers and walked back to the hotel for lunch with the sharpened appetites of twenty. When Bobby Quinton left them, Olivia reproached herself for lack of sympathy. The boy had done his best. A rotten, and crocky heart, who was she to despise? But for circumstance he might have done heroic things. Perhaps in his defiance of physical disability he was doing a heroic thing even now. Still. . . . To Lydia, in an ironically teasing mood, she declared: “When I do fall in love, it’s not going to be with any one like Bobby Quinton. I want a man—there would be a devil of a row, of course, if he tried—but one capable of beating me.” “Bobby would do that, right enough, if you gave him the chance,” said Lydia. Olivia reflected for a while. “Why have you got your knife into him like that?” she asked abruptly. “I haven’t, my dear child. If I had, do you think I would have allowed him to come down? I live and let live. By letting live, I live very comfortably and manage, with moderate means, to have a very good time.” Olivia, already dressed for dinner, looked down on the easy, creamy, handsome, kimono-clad woman, curled up like a vast Angora cat on the hotel bedroom sofa, and once more was dimly conscious of a doubt whether the galley of Lydia Dawlish was the one for her mother’s daughter to row in.