And if it looked aside at youth
and was pierced by the sword of tragedy, yet it was too well bred or too
conventional to let even one of the world around witness the wound. There
is much secret bravery in social life. But these elderly figure-heads
were fewer than usual to-night. Youth seemed to have usurped the
playing-grounds of pleasure, to have driven old age away into the
shadows. With flag flying, with trumpet and drum, it gaily held the
field. The lady of the feathers, Valentine, and Julian leaned out from
their box as from the car of a balloon and saw below them a world of
youth hand in hand with the world of pleasure the gods offer to youth as
wine. It was yet early in the evening, and the hours were only tripping
along, as women trip in the pictures of Albert Moore. They had not begun
to dance, although the band was playing a laughing measure from an opera
of Auber that foams with frivolity. Men kept dropping in, cigar in mouth,
walking to their seats with that air of well-washed and stiff composure
peculiar to British youth, grim with self-consciousness, but affecting
the devil-may-care with a certain measure of success. Some of them
escorted ladies, but by far the greater number were in couples, or in
parties of three or four.
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