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spend your old age, and your middle age too, repenting it.’
Her ladyship lapsed into contemplative silence, soothed
by the brandy.
But Connie was not keen on going to London, and being
steered into the smart world by Lady Bennerley. She didn’t
feel really smart, it wasn’t interesting. And she did feel the
peculiar, withering coldness under it all; like the soil of Lab-
rador, which his gay little flowers on its surface, and a foot
down is frozen.
Tommy Dukes was at Wragby, and another man, Harry
Winterslow, and Jack Strangeways with his wife Olive. The
talk was much more desultory than when only the cronies
were there, and everybody was a bit bored, for the weather
was bad, and there was only billiards, and the pianola to
dance to.
Olive was reading a book about the future, when babies
would be bred in bottles, and women would be ‘immu-
nized’.
’Jolly good thing too!’ she said. ‘Then a woman can live
her own life.’ Strangeways wanted children, and she didn’t.
’How’d you like to be immunized?’ Winterslow asked
her, with an ugly smile.
’I hope I am; naturally,’ she said. ‘Anyhow the future’s
going to have more sense, and a woman needn’t be dragged
down by her FUNCTIONS.’
’Perhaps she’ll float off into space altogether,’ said Dukes.
’I do think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot
of the physical disabilities,’ said Clifford. ‘All the love-busi-
ness for example, it might just as well go. I suppose it would

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