But the girl standing next him dropped him a flippant question with veiled irony and dislike in her stupid eyes, and turned away from him before he answered.  She was a vulgar, garish little creature, and he could afford to smile satirically (and perhaps too consciously) at the powdered shoulder which she jerked up at him.  And yet he was deeply, miserably shamed.

It was like a play in which he was the only one who did not know his part.  Even Cosgrave played up—­a little too triumphantly, showing off—­as a tried man-of-the-world.  And at her given moment the star performer made a dramatic entry into the midst of them, a cloak of pale blue brocade thrown over her scanty dress and her plumes still tossing from the elaborately tousled head.

They greeted her with hand-clapping and laughter, and she held out her thin arms, embracing them as old friends.  In her attitude and in her eyes which passed rapidly from one to another, there was good-humoured understanding.  She knew probably what the more immaculate among them thought of her, and that they were there to boast about it as English people boast of having visited Montmartre at midnight.  It was daring and amusing to be at this woman’s notorious dinners.  They thought they patronized her, whatever else they knew.  But in reality the joke was on her side.

“Allons—­to ze feast, friends.”

She had seen Robert Stonehouse, and she went straight to him, waving the rest aside like a flock of importunate pigeons, and took his arm.  “You and I lead the way, Monsieur le docteur.”

He did not answer.  He was glad that she had signalled him out.  It smoothed his raw pride.  And yet he thought:  “This is her way of making fun of me.”  And he hated her and the scented warmth of her slim body as it brushed lightly against his.  He hated his own excited triumph.  For the first time he became aware of something definitely abnormal in himself, as though a dead skin had been stripped off his senses and he had begun to see and hear with a primitive and stupefying clearness.

The rest followed them noisily along grimy, winding passages and between dusty wedges of improbable landscapes out on to the stage.  A long table had been laid in the midst of the stereotyped drawing-room, which formed the scene of her grotesque dancing, and absurdly elaborate waiters in powdered hair and knee-breeches hovered in the wings.  They were not real waiters, and from the moment they came out into the footlights the guests themselves became the chorus of a musical comedy.  It was difficult to believe in the over-abundant flowers with which the table was strewn or in the champagne lying ostentatiously in wait.

The curtain had been left up, and the dim and dingy auditorium gaped dismally at them.  The empty seats were threatening as a silent, starving mob pressed against the windows of a feasting-house.  But the woman on Stonehouse’s arm waved to them.