G.J. had grown friendly and appreciative of her, for the simple reason that she had singled him out and always tried to please him, even when taking liberties with him.  He liked her because she was different from her set.  She had a masculine mind, whereas many even of the males of her set had a feminine mind.  She was exceedingly well educated; she had ideas on everything; and she never failed in catching an allusion.  She would criticise her set very honestly; her attitude to it and to herself seemed to be that of an impartial and yet indulgent philosopher; withal she could be intensely loyal to fools and worse who were friends.  As for the public, she was apparently convinced of the sincerity of her scorn for it, while admitting that she enjoyed publicity, which had become indispensable to her as a drug may become indispensable.  Moreover, there was her wit and her candid, queer respect for G.J.

Yes, he had greatly admired her for her qualities.  He did not, however, greatly admire her physique.  She was tall, with a head scarcely large enough for her body.  She had a nice snub nose which in another woman might have been irresistible.  She possessed very little physical charm, and showed very little taste in her neat, prim frocks.  Not merely had she a masculine mind, but she was somewhat hard, a self-confessed egoist.  She swore like the set, using about one “damn” or one “bloody” to every four cigarettes, of which she smoked, perhaps, fifty a day—­including some in taxis.  She discussed the sexual vagaries of her friends and her enemies with a freedom and an apparent learning which were remarkable in a virgin.

In the end she had married Carlos Smith, and, characteristically, had received him into her own home instead of going to his; as a fact, he had none, having been a parent’s close-kept darling.  London had only just recovered from the excitations of the wedding.  G.J. had regarded the marriage with benevolence, perhaps with relief.

“Anybody else coming to lunch?” he discreetly inquired of his familiar, the parlour-maid.

She breathed a negative.

He had guessed it.  Concepcion had meant to be alone with him.  Having married for love, and her husband being rapt away by the war, she intended to resume her old, honest, quasi-sentimental relations with G.J.  A reliable and experienced bachelor is always useful to a young grass-widow, and, moreover, the attendant hopeless adorer nourishes her hungry egotism as nobody else can.  G.J. thought these thoughts, clearly and callously, in the same moment as, mounting the next flight of stairs, he absolutely trembled with sympathetic anguish for Concepcion.  His errand was an impossible one; he feared, or rather he hoped, that the very look on his face might betray the dreadful news to that undeceivable intuition which women were supposed to possess.  He hesitated on the stairs; he recoiled from the top step—­(she had coquettishly withdrawn herself into the room)—­he hadn’t the slightest idea how to begin.  Yes, the errand was an impossible one, and yet such errands had to be performed by somebody, were daily being performed by somebodies.  Then he had the idea of telephoning privily to fetch her cousin Sara.  He would open by remarking casually to Concepcion: