for all he wanted.  He could not even refer to his father.  He scorned M. Defourcambault because M. Defourcambault was not worthy of his heritage.  M. Defourcambault was a little rotter, yet he had driven the carriage of Boulanger in a crisis of the history of France!  Miss Wheeler, however, did not scorn M. Defourcambault.  On the contrary, she looked at him with admiration, as though he had now proved that he had been everywhere, seen everything, and done everything.  George’s mood was black.  He was a nobody; he would always be a nobody; why should he be wasting his time and looking a fool in this new world?

II

After dinner, in the drawing-room which had cost Irene Wheeler an extra flat, there was, during coffee, a certain amount of general dullness, slackness, and self-consciousness which demonstrated once more Miss Wheeler’s defects as a hostess.  Miss Wheeler would not or could not act as shepherdess and inspirer to her guests.  She reclined, and charmingly left them to manufacture the evening for her.  George was still disappointed and disgusted; for he had imagined, very absurdly as he admitted, that artistic luxuriousness always implied social dexterity and the ability to energize and reinvigorate diversion without apparent effort.  There were moments during coffee which reminded him of the maladroit hospitalities of the Five Towns.

Then Everard Lucas opened the piano, and the duel between him and Laurencine was resumed.  The girl yielded.  Electric lights were adjusted.  She began to play, while Lucas, smoking, leaned over the piano.  George was standing by himself at a little distance behind the piano.  He had perhaps been on his way to a chair when suddenly caught and immobilized by one of those hazards which do notoriously occur—­the victim never remembers how—­in drawing-rooms.  Hands in pockets, he looked aimlessly about, smiling perfunctorily, and wondering where he should settle or whether he should remain where he was.  In the deep embrasure of the large east bow-window Lois was lounging.  She beckoned to him, not with her hand but with a brief, bright smile—­she smiled rarely—­and with a lifting of the chin.  He responded alertly and pleasurably, and went to sit beside her.  Such invitations from young women holding themselves apart in obscurity are never received without excitement and never unanswered.

Crimson curtains of brocaded silk would have cut off the embrasure entirely from the room had they been fully drawn, but they were not fully drawn; one was not drawn at all, and the other was only half drawn.  Still, the mere fact of the curtains, drawn or undrawn, did morally separate the embrasure from the salon; and the shadows thickened in front of the window.  The smile had gone from Lois’s face, but it had been there.  Sequins glittered on her dark dress, the line of the low neck of which was distinct against the pallor of the flesh.  George could