follow the outlines of her slanted, plump body from the hair and freckled face down to the elaborate shoes.  The eyes were half closed.  She did not speak.  The figure of Laurencine, whose back was towards the window, received an aura from the electric light immediately over the music-stand of the piano.  She played brilliantly.  She played with a brilliance that astonished George....  She was exceedingly clever, was this awkward girl who had not long since left school Her body might be awkward, but not her hands.  The music radiated from the piano and filled the room with brightness, with the illusion of the joy of life, and with a sense of triumph.  To George it was an intoxication.

A man-servant entered with a priceless collection of bon-bons, some of which he deferentially placed on a small table in the embrasure.  To do so he had to come into the embrasure, disturbing the solitude, which had already begun to exist, of Lois and George.  He ignored the pair.  His sublime indifference seemed to say:  “I am beyond good and evil.”  But at the same time it left them more sensitively awake to themselves than before.  The hostess indolently muttered an order to the man, and in passing the door on his way out he extinguished several lights.  The place and the hour grew romantic.  George was impressed by the scene, and he eagerly allowed it to impress him.  It was, to him, a marvellous scene; the splendour of the apartment, the richly attired girls, the gay, exciting music, the spots of high light, the glooms, the glimpses everywhere of lovely objects.  He said to himself:  “I was born for this.”

Lois turned her head slowly and looked out of the window.

“Wonderful view from here,” she murmured.

George turned his head.  The flat was on the sixth story.  The slope of central London lay beneath.  There was no moon, but there were stars in a clear night.  Roofs; lighted windows; lines of lighted traffic; lines of lamps patterning the invisible meadows of a park; hiatuses of blackness; beyond, several towers scarcely discernible against the sky—­the towers of Parliament, and the high tower of the Roman Catholic Cathedral:  these were London.

“You haven’t seen it in daytime, have you?” said Lois.

“No.  I’d sooner see it at night.”

“So would I.”

The reply, the sympathy in it, the soft, thrilled tone of It, startled him.  His curiosity about Lois was being justified, after all.  And he was startled too at the extraordinary surprises of his own being.  Yesterday he had parted from Marguerite; not ten years ago, but yesterday.  And now already he was conscious of pleasure, both physical and spiritual, in the voice of another girl heard in the withdrawn obscurity of the embrasure.  Yes, and a girl whom he had despised!  Yesterday he had seriously believed himself to be a celibate for life; he had dismissed for ever the hope of happiness.  He had seen naught but a dogged and eternal infelicity.  And now he was, if not finding happiness, expecting it.  He felt disloyal—­less precisely to Marguerite than to a vanished ideal.  He felt that he ought to be ashamed.  For Marguerite still existed; she was existing at that moment less than three miles off—­somewhere over there in the dark.