So he did not get better.  And the forces that Robert Stonehouse had counted on had failed.  He had been a successful physician outside his specialty and his sheer indifference to his patients as human beings had been one of his chief weapons.  He braced them, imposing his sense of values so that their own sufferings became insignificant, and they ceased to worry so much about themselves.  But with Cosgrave he was not indifferent.  Some indefinable element of emotion had been thrown into the scales, upsetting the delicate balance of his judgment.

And his old influence had gone too.  It had failed him from that moment in Connie Edwards’ room when suddenly Cosgrave had realized the general futility of things.

“I’ll see him through all the same,” Stonehouse thought, with a kind of violence, “I’ll pull him through.”

After the first few moments he had ignored the scene before him.  It was boring—­imbecile.  Even to him, with his contempt for the average of human intelligence, it seemed incredible that the gyrating of a few half-naked women and the silly obscenities of a comedian dressed in a humourless caricature of a gentleman should hold the attention of sane men for a minute.  Now abruptly the orchestra caught hold of him, shook him and dragged him back.  It was playing something which he had heard before—­on a street barrel-organ, and which he disliked now with an intensity for which he could give no reason.  It was perhaps because he wanted to remain aloof and indifferent, and because it would not let him be.  It destroyed his isolation.  His pulse caught up its beat like the rest.  His personality lost outline—­merging itself into the cumbrous uncouth being of the audience.

Though it was a rhythm rather than a tune it was not rag-time.  Rag-time Stonehouse appreciated.  He recognized it as a symptom of the mal du siecle, a deliberate break with the natural rhythm of life, a desperate ennui, the hysterical pressure upon an aching cancer.  Ragtime twitched at the nerves.  This thing jostled you, bustled you.  It was a shout—­a caper—­the ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay of its day, riotous and vulgar.  It was the sort of thing coster-women danced to on the pavements of Epsom on Derby night.

The stage, set with a stereotyped drawing-room, was empty as the curtain rose.  Two hands, dead white under their load of emeralds, held the black hangings over the centre doorway—­then parted them brusquely.  Stonehouse heard the audience stir in their seats, but there was only a faint applause.  No one had come to the theatre for any other purpose than to see her, but they knew her history.  And, after all, they were respectable people.

Cosgrave caught him by the arm.

“Oh, my word—­it’s her right enough!”