"
"I am so sorry that you were stranded."
"Not that, but the congratulations. It is so disgusting, the way
an engagement is regarded as public property--a kind of waste
place where every outsider may shoot his vulgar sentiment. All
those old women smirking!"
"One has to go through it, I suppose. They won't notice us so
much next time."
"But my point is that their whole attitude is wrong. An
engagement--horrid word in the first place--is a private matter,
and should be treated as such."
Yet the smirking old women, however wrong individually, were
racially correct. The spirit of the generations had smiled
through them, rejoicing in the engagement of Cecil and Lucy
because it promised the continuance of life on earth. To Cecil
and Lucy it promised something quite different--personal love.
Hence Cecil's irritation and Lucy's belief that his irritation
was just.
"How tiresome!" she said. "Couldn't you have escaped to tennis?"
"I don't play tennis--at least, not in public.
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