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 share. Between thirty-five and fifty, not particularly well-connected, not a parti among them, not even extravagantly popular, but useful—apparently—and ubiquitous. I could give you the names of a dozen. . . Several of them have been in quite good regiments at some time or other. I understand they belong to the usual clubs; most of them dance quite competently; all of them play extremely good bridge, I am told. . . Several women I know make out a stop-gap list of them; then, if they’re short of a man—it is several grades lower than the embassies, of course, and you are not expected to give even a day’s notice—, the butler can telephone to them in turn until he finds one disengaged. Delightfully simple, is it not? Having no personalities of their own, they accord well with every one; having no pride, they never resent an eleventh-hour invitation; they are too discreet to pay unduly marked attention to a married woman, they know their place too well to attempt any intimacy with the girls.

I am not ashamed to confess that I have an old-fashioned prejudice in favour of a man who is a man; but the kind I am describing seem to ask nothing more of life than invitations and more invitations—and this strange modern privilege of being “Bunny” and “Chris” and