“And I’m thrilled by it!,” she cried in unaffected rapture. “All the violence and horror and madness of the war are reflected in the art of to-day. It’s not pretty, but it’s true. This party, which dear Lady Dainton hated so much . . . The restlessness, the hysteria . . . Jazz, in itself . . .” “That which remains,” I murmured, in Bertrand’s phrase. I was reminded of the days before the war when revues and ragtime first established their empire in London. Then, as the curtain prepared to fall, principals and supers, the latest beauty and the last comedian, a scene-shifter or two and the prompter all jigged and shuffled to the haunting syncopation of the _Honeymoon Rag_ or _That Ol’ Mason-Dixon Line_. The audience jigged and shuffled up the gangways; the men were still humming, the women still working their shoulders when they drove away. ‘_Oh, honey, I feel funny when dat coon begin to play_ . . .’ Now they jigged and shuffled through the streets and into the houses; they could not stop; life was become an endless syncopation. I wondered when our friends would settle down. If the art of the day seemed, in my philistine eyes, epileptic, it was at least faithful to the epileptic contortions and fitful mood of the times. Reviewing these stupefying parties, I see men and women in a high fever. The girls all wear the same short skirts and exhibit the same bare backs; they have achieved the same flat figure; and, granted an upturned nose, they bob their hair in the same way. Very young, very pretty and very full of high spirits, they think the same thoughts and express them in the same jargon with the same loud assurance. Their sameness makes every party the same. I see myself talking feverishly of films with some star from Los Angeles and being told, by little Ivy Gaymer, of the latest divorce; I see young poets discussing a recent lampoon and young actresses describing their last triumph. There are financial groups and political caves; my cousin Laurence, who has cultivated a knowing and shrewd manner, runs feverishly from one to another, nodding, whispering, waving a vast cigar and, I fancy, rather modelling himself on Saltash. Sam Dainton, who is beginning to look dissipated, engages in feverish pursuit of one woman after another. This fever has infected the women; the divorce-court does a flourishing trade; no one can remember who at any moment is allied with whom; and Sam makes overtures to all in the sure belief that some—and, perhaps, most—will prove to be complaisant. Sir Rupert Foreditch spreads the fever among the young politicians.