out, and Dodo was introduced to Lady Grantham.
"What an age you and Edith have been," said Miss Grantham. "I have been dying to see you, Dodo."
"We were talking," said Dodo, "and for once Edith agreed with me."
"She never agrees with me," remarked Lady Grantham.
"I wonder if I should always agree with you then," said Dodo. "Do things that disagree with the same thing agree with one another?"
"What did Edith agree with you about?" asked Miss Grantham.
"I'm not sure that I did really agree with her," interpolated Edith.
"Oh, about morals," said Dodo. "I said that a man's morals did not matter in ordinary social life. That they did not come into the question at all."
"No, I don't think I do agree with you," said Edith. "All social life is a degree of intimacy, and you said yourself that you wouldn't get under the influence of an immoral man—in other words, you wouldn't be intimate with him."
"Oh, being intimate hasn't anything to do with being under a man's influence," said Dodo. "I'm very intimate with lots of people. Jack, for instance, but I'm not under his influence."
"Then you think it doesn't matter whether society is composed of people without morals?" said Edith.
"I think it's a bad thing that morals should deteriorate in any society," said Dodo; "but I don't think that society should take cognisance of the moral code. Public opinion don't touch that. If a man is a brute, he won't be any better for knowing that other people disapprove of him. If he knows that, and is worth anything at all, it will simply have the opposite effect on him. He very likely will try to hide it; but that doesn't make it any better. A whited sepulchre is no better than a sepulchre unwhitened. You must act by your own lights. If an action doesn't seem to you wrong nothing in the world will prevent your doing it, if your desire is sufficiently strong. You cannot elevate tone by punishing offences. There are no fewer criminals since the tread-mill was invented and Botany Bay discovered."
"You mean that there would be no increase in crime if the law did not punish?"
"I mean that punishment is not the best way of checking crime, though that is really altogether a different question. You won't check immorality by dealing with it as a social crime."
There was a short silence, broken only by the whispering of the wind in the fir trees. Then on the stillness came a light, rippling laugh. Dodo got out of her chair, and plucked a couple of roses from a bush near her.
"I can't be serious any longer," she said; "not a single moment longer. I'm so dreadfully glad to be in England again. Really, there is no place like it. I hate the insolent extravagant beauty of Switzerland —it is like chromo lithographs. Look at that long, flat, grey distance over there. There is nothing so beautiful as that abroad."
Dodo fastened the roses in the front of her dress, and laughed again.
"I laugh for pure happiness," she continued. "I laughed when I saw the cliff of Dover to-day, not because I was sea-sick—I never am sea-sick—but simply because I was coming home again. Jack parted from me at Dover. I am very happy about Jack. I believe in him thoroughly."
Dodo was getting serious again in spite of herself. Lady Grantham was watching her curiously, and without any feeling of disappointment. She did not wear spectacles, she was, at least, as tall as herself, and she dressed, if anything, rather better. She was still wearing half-mourning, but half-mourning suited Dodo very well.
"Decidedly it's a pity to analyse one's feelings," Dodo went on, "they do resolve themselves into such very small factors. I am well, I am in England, where you can eat your dinner without suspicion of frogs, or caterpillars in your cauliflower. I had two caterpillars in my cauliflower at Zermatt one night. I shall sleep in a clean white bed, and I shall not have to use Keating. I can talk as ridiculously as I like, without thinking of the French for anything. Oh, I'm entirely happy."
Dodo was aware of more reasons for happiness than she mentioned. She was particularly conscious of the relief she felt in getting away from the Prince. For some days past she had been unpleasantly aware of his presence. She could not manage to think of him quite as lightly as she thought of anyone else. It was a continual effort to her to appear quite herself in his presence, and she was constantly rushing into extremes in order to seem at her ease. He was stronger, she felt, than she was, and she did not like it. The immense relief which his absence brought more than compensated for the slight blankness that his absence left. In a way she felt dependent on him, which chafed and irritated her, for she had never come under such a yoke before. She had had several moments of sudden anger against herself on her way home. She found herself always thinking about him when she was not thinking about anything else; and though she was quite capable of sending her thoughts off to other subjects, when they had done their work they always fluttered back again to the same resting-place, and Dodo was conscious of an effort, slight indeed, but still an effort, in frightening them off. Her curious insistence on her own happiness had struck Edith. She felt it unnatural that Dodo should mention it, and she drew one of two conclusions from it; either that Dodo had had a rather trying time, for some reason or other, or that she wished to convince herself, by constant repetition, of something that she was not quite sure about; and both of these conclusions were in a measure correct.
"Who was out at Zermatt when you were there?" inquired Miss Grantham.
"Oh, there was mother there, and Maud and her husband, and a Russian princess, Waldenech's sister, and Jack, of course," said Dodo.
"Wasn't Prince Waldenech there himself?" she asked.
"The Prince? Oh yes, he was there; didn't I say so?" said Dodo.
"He's rather amusing, isn't he?" said Miss Grantham. "I don't know him at all."
"Oh, yes," said Dodo; "a little ponderous, you know, but very presentable, and good company."
Edith looked up suddenly at Dodo. There was an elaborate carelessness, she thought, in her voice. It was just a little overdone. The night was descending fast, and she could only just see the lines of her face above the misty folds of her grey dress. But even in that half light she thought that her careless voice did not quite seem a true interpretation of her expression. It might have been only the dimness of the shadow, but she thought she looked anxious and rather depressed.
Lady Grantham drew her shawl more closely round her shoulders, and remarked that it was getting cold. Edith got up and prepared to go in, and Miss Grantham nestled in her chair. Only Dodo stood quite motionless, and Edith noticed that her hands were tearing one of the roses to pieces, and scattering the petals on the grass.
"Are you going in, Dodo?" she asked; "or would you rather stop out a little longer?"
"I think I won't come in just yet," said Dodo; "it's so delightful to have a breath of cool air, after being in a stuffy carriage all day. But don't any of you stop out if you'd rather go in. I shall just smoke one more cigarette."
"I'll stop with you, Dodo," said Miss Grantham. "I don't want to go in at all. Edith, if you're going in, throw the windows in the drawing-room open, and play to us."
Lady Grantham and Edith went towards the house.
"I didn't expect her to be a bit like that," said Lady Grantham. "I always heard she was so lively, and talked more nonsense in half an hour than we can get through in a year. She's very beautiful."
"I
