Before the Beach Club closed certain species of humanity left in a body, including a number of the unfledged, and one or two pretty opportunists.  Portlaw went, also Malcourt.

It required impudence, optimism, and executive ability for Malcourt to make his separate adieux and render impartial justice on each occasion.

There was a girl at “The Breakers” who was rather apt to slop over, so that interview was timed for noon, when the sun dries up everything very quickly, including such by-products as tears.

Then there was Miss Suydani to ride with at five o’clock on the beach, where the chain of destruction linked mullet and osprey and ended with the robber eagle—­and Malcourt—­if he chose.

But here there were no tears for the westering sun to dry, only strangely quenched eyes, more green than blue, for Malcourt to study, furtively; only the pale oval of a face to examine, curiously, and not too cynically; and a mouth, somewhat colourless, to reassure without conviction—­also without self-conviction.  This was all—­except a pair of slim, clinging hands to release when the time came, using discretion—­and some amiable firmness if required.

They were discussing the passing of the old regime, for lack of a safer theme; and he had spoken flippantly of the decadence of the old families—­his arm around her and her pale cheek against his shoulder.

She listened rather absently; her heart was very full and she was thinking of other matters.  But as he continued she answered at length, hesitating, using phrases as trite and quaintly stilted as the theme itself, gently defending the old names he sneered at.  And in her words he savoured a certain old-time flavour of primness and pride—­a vaguely delicate hint of resentment, which it amused him to excite.  Pacing the dunes with her waist enlaced, he said, to incite retort: 

“The old families are done for.  Decadent in morals, in physique, mean mentally and spiritually, they are even worse off than respectfully cherished ruins, because they are out of fashion; they and their dingy dwellings.  Our house is on the market; I’d be glad to see it sold only Tressilvain will get half.”

“In you,” she said, “there seems to be other things, besides reverence, which are out of fashion.”

He continued, smilingly:  “As the old mansions disappear, Virginia, so disintegrate those families whose ancestors gave names to the old lanes of New Amsterdam.  I reverence neither the one nor the other.  Good riddance!  The fit alone survive.”

“I still survive, if you please.”

“Proving the rule, dear.  But, yourself excepted, look at the few of us who chance to be here in the South.  Look at Courtlandt Classon, intellectually destitute!  Cuyp, a mental brother to the ox; and Vetchen to the ass; and Mrs. Van Dieman to somebody’s maidservant—­that old harridan with all the patrician distinction of a Dame des Halles—­”