“Con, I do ask you not to be a child.”

“But I am a child.  Why don’t you humour me?  You know I’ve had a nervous breakdown.  You used to humour me.”

He shook his head.

“Humouring you won’t do your nervous breakdown any good.  It might some women’s—­but not yours.”

“You shall humour me!” she cried.  “I haven’t told you half my ruin.  Do you know I meant to love Carly all my life.  I felt sure I should.  Well, I can’t!  It’s gone, all that feeling—­already!  In less than two years!  And now I’m only sorry for him and sorry for myself.  Isn’t it horrible?  Isn’t it horrible?”

“Try not to think,” he murmured.

She sat up impetuously.

“Don’t talk such damned nonsense!  ‘Try not to think’!  Why, my frightful unhappiness is the one thing that keeps me alive.”

“Yes,” G.J. yielded.  “It was nonsense.”

She sank back.  He saw moisture in her eyes and felt it in his own.

Chapter 28

SALOME

Lady Queenie arrived in haste, as though relentless time had pursued her up the stairs.

“Why, you’re in the dark here!” she exclaimed impatiently, and impatiently switched on several lights.  “Sorry I’m late, G.J.,” she said perfunctorily, without taking any trouble to put conviction into her voice.  “How have you two been getting on?”

She looked at Concepcion and G.J. in a peculiar way, inquisitorial and implicatory.

Then, towards the door: 

“Come in, come in, Dialin.”

A young soldier with the stripe of a lance-corporal entered, slightly nervous and slightly defiant.

“And you, Miss I-forget-your-name.”

A young woman entered; she had very red lips and very high heels, and was both more nervous and more defiant than the young soldier.

“This is Mr. Dialin, you know, Con, second ballet-master at the Ottoman.  I met him by sheer marvellous chance.  He’s only got ten minutes; he hasn’t really got that; but he’s going to see me do my Salome dance.”

Lady Queenie made no attempt to introduce Miss I-forget-your-name, who of her own accord took a chair with a curious, dashed effrontery.  It appeared that she was attached to Mr. Dialin.  Lady Queenie cast off rapidly gloves, hat and coat, and then, having rushed to the bell and rung it fiercely several times, came back to the chaise-longue and gazed at it and at the surrounding floor.

“Would you mind, Con?”

Concepcion rose.  Lady Queenie, rushing off again, pushed several more switches, and from a thick cluster of bulbs in front of a large mirror at the end of the room there fell dazzling sheets of light.  A footman presented himself.

“Push the day-bed right away towards the window,” she commanded.

The footman inclined and obeyed, and the lance-corporal superiorly helped him.  Then the footman was told to energise the gramophone, which in its specially designed case stood in a corner.  The footman seemed to be on intimate terms with the gramophone.  Meanwhile Lady Queenie, with a safety-pin, was fastening the back hem of her short skirt to the front between the knees.  Still bending, she took her shoes off.  Her scent impregnated the room.