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 Gilda. "He will never answer, but he will expect the most enormous posts. It's queer that we three who have been talking so much about primæval simplicity should have nothing much in front of us but drawing-rooms and gardens for the next four years, while Archie, who never asks for anything better than a sofa—from all I've seen of him—should be actually going out into the wilds to do things."

"Why, yes," said Mrs. McKenna, "Archie is actually going to revert. Laura would do that easily too. Now for you and me, Gilda, life is much more perilous. Archie and Laura would camp out quite happily, compassed about by a perfect cloud of lions, and so long as they weren't eaten—well, they'd just go on living. But for us the next four years are going to be most terribly dangerous. I have been feeling so happy lately that I know I must be terribly insecure, right at the edge of something. The struggle for life—they'll never know the meaning of it, will they, Gilda? The feeling that if you stopped for a moment you'd go out."

Gilda's eyes narrowed. "Yes, it's desperate,