"You think you're a second Solomon," said his sister, "but you're not."
"No." He shook his head. "I disagree. I am entirely modern in my thoughts. I don't wish to be anything else. I'm not like Eric. Eric thinks we have had the best. I think we are always having the best. But to return to you."
"Yes, do return to me. I didn't mean to cause a digression. How can I stop being the spinster type?"
"By not hemming yourself in so much. You surround your femininity with barbed-wire entanglements."
"Really? They don't seem to have kept Pat Enderby out, and some others I could mention."
"They never got in. That's what I complain of."
"Oh, but my dear Noel—you surely don't think I'm going to turn myself into a sort of vampire just to please you? Not that I couldn't—I'm almost certain I could. . . ."
"I never meant that. You willfully misunderstand me. Vampires are all very well on the screen, or on some paving stone in Leicester Square, but they don't go in our sort of life. No man would willingly marry one."
"They don't on the screen," she said. "They
