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though his father was a very wealthy man, was a little awed by the surroundings. He had heard of Bolter's—once or twice, not more—from the fringes of that governing world in which some of his University friends lived. He remembered the son of a Cabinet Minister complaining of Bolter's, and a peer of the realm (a former furniture dealer and picture broker and for that matter moneylender) saying that Bolter's was filthy. Such praise was praise indeed. He remembered that ladies did not go to Bolter's. He remembered talk of a dinner at Bolter's just before a little group of men had gone out in his first year to India, and now that he was sitting in Bolter's he felt duly impressed. He knew that Jimmy's people were "in" what he could never be "in." Melba was more of an enigma to him, but anyhow Melba was thick with Jimmy and Jimmy's lot. In other words, he knew that Jimmy and Melba were both on the right side of a certain line which runs round very definitely through the core of English society and encloses a very narrow central space; but, on the other hand, he knew—he had the best of reasons for knowing—that they were not exactly flush. He knew they couldn't be flush because whereas he,