Since when had English women grown so beautiful?
At all the weddings and most of the dances he had lately attended, the brides and the _debutantes_ had seemed to him of a loveliness out of all proportion to that of their fore-runners in those far-off days before the war.

And when a War Office mission, just before the Armistice, had taken him to some munition factories in the north, he had been scarcely less seized by the comeliness of the girl-workers:--the long lines of them in their blue overalls, and the blue caps that could scarcely restrain the beauty and wealth of pale yellow or red-gold hair beneath.

Is there something in the rush and flame of war that quickens old powers and dormant virtues in a race?
Better feeding and better wages among the working-classes--one may mark them down perhaps as factors in this product of a heightened beauty.

But for these exquisite women of the upper class, is it the pace at which they have lived, unconsciously, for these five years, that has brought out this bloom and splendour ?--and will it pass as it has come?
Questions of this kind floated through his mind as he lay looking at Helena, melting rapidly into others much more peremptory and personal.
"Are you soon going up to Town ?" he asked her presently.

His voice seemed to startle her.