And Diana beckoned to the footman to fill her glass.

‘Gerald shouldn’t forbid me,’ she said calmly, to the company at large.

‘All right, Di,’ said her brother amiably. And she glanced challenge at him as she drank from her glass.

There was a strange freedom, that almost amounted to anarchy, in the house. It was rather a resistance to authority, than liberty. Gerald had some command, by mere force of personality, not because of any granted position. There was a quality in his voice, amiable but dominant, that cowed the others, who were all younger than he.

Hermione was having a discussion with the bridegroom about nationality.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I think that the appeal to patriotism is a mistake. It is like one house of business rivalling another house of business.’

‘Well you can hardly say that, can you?’ exclaimed Gerald, who had a real PASSION for discussion. ‘You couldn’t call a race a business concern, could you?—and nationality roughly corresponds to race, I think. I think it is MEANT to.’

There was a moment’s pause. Gerald and Hermione were always strangely but politely and evenly inimical.

‘DO you think race corresponds with nationality?’ she asked musingly, with expressionless indecision.

Birkin knew she was waiting for him to participate. And dutifully he spoke up.

‘I think Gerald is right—race is the essential element in nationality, in Europe at least,’ he said.

Again Hermione paused, as if to allow this statement to cool. Then she said with strange assumption of authority:

‘Yes, but even so, is the patriotic appeal an appeal to the racial instinct? Is it not rather an appeal to the proprietory instinct, the COMMERCIAL instinct? And isn’t this what we mean by nationality?’

‘Probably,’ said Birkin, who felt that such a discussion was out of place and out of time.

But Gerald was now on the scent of argument.

‘A race may have its commercial aspect,’ he said. ‘In fact it must. It is like a family. You MUST make provision. And to make provision you have got to strive against other families, other nations. I don’t see why you shouldn’t.’

Again Hermione made a pause, domineering and cold, before she replied: ‘Yes, I think it is always wrong to provoke a spirit of rivalry. It makes bad blood. And bad blood accumulates.’

‘But you can’t do away with the spirit of emulation altogether?’ said Gerald. ‘It is one of the necessary incentives to production and improvement.’

‘Yes,’ came Hermione’s sauntering response. ‘I think you can do away with it.’

‘I must say,’ said Birkin, ‘I detest the spirit of emulation.’ Hermione was biting a piece of bread, pulling it from between her teeth with her fingers, in a slow, slightly derisive movement. She turned to Birkin.

‘You do hate it, yes,’ she said, intimate and gratified.