CHAPTER 11

"even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Lily.

Sometimes she and Miss Taylor talked simultaneously, unobtrusively and with a

 bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire.

They were here—and they accepted Alex and me, making only a polite, pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained.

They knew that soon dinner would be over, and a little later the evening too would end and be casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an

evening was rushed from phase to phase toward its close in continual disappointment or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.

"You make me feel uncivilized, Lily," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces," burst out Alex violently. "I've become a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone. "Well, it's a fine book, and everyone ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out, the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Alex's getting very profound," said Lily with an expression of unthinking sadness. "He reads