That was how the heroine of a book would play it and Diana was still writing her own story the best heroines she'd always believed took their fate into their own hands.

Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a terrible waste of a girl's time.

They were a society whose chief vocations were to entertain and be entertained.

Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more.

Among her other talents were forgetting what she did not like and ignoring what she preferred not to see.

They were all dressed in their finest as though life really were some magical stage play in which every moment ought to be illuminated with its own bright spotlight.

She considered herself unconventional.