“I like it so.  I see all my friends there—­my old friends who are gone—­God knows where.  They sit and laugh and clap and nod to one another.  They say:  ’Voyons, our Gyp still ‘aving a good time.’  And I kiss my ’and to them all.”

She kissed her hand and threw her head back in the familiar movement as though she waited for their applause.  And when it was over she looked up into Robert Stonehouse’s face.

“Monsieur le docteur is a leetle pale.  One is always nervous at one’s debut.  You never act before, hein?”

“Not in a theatre like this,” he said.

And he felt a momentary satisfaction because she knew that his answer had a meaning which she did not understand.

She persisted.

“Monsieur Cosgrave say you would not come.  To say you never do nothing—­only work and work.  Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t dance—­don’t go to the theatre—­don’t love no one—­don’t get a leetle drunk sometimes?  Never, never?”

“No,” he said scornfully.

“Don’t want to, hein?”

“I hate that sort of thing.”

(But she was making him into a ridiculous prig.  She turned the values of life topsy-turvy with that one ironic, good-natured gesture.)

“Eh, bien, it’s a good thing for my sort there are not too many of your sort, my friend.  But per’aps it is not quite so bad as it seems, for you ’are come after all.”

“I had to,” he thrust at her.

“’Ow you say—­professionally?”

“Yes.”

“But I ’ave not get ze tummy-ache—­not yet.”

“I don’t care about you.”

“You want to look after your leetle friend, hein?”

“Yes.”

She was unruffled—­even concerned to satisfy him.

“Well, then, you be policeman.  You sit ’ere.  It is always better to watch ze thief than ze coffre-fort.  You keep an eye on me and see I don’t run away with ’im. Voyons, mesdames et messieurs, our friend ’ere ’ave the place of honour.  ’E sit next me and see I behave nice.  ‘E don’t like me ver’ much.  ’E think me a bad woman.”

They laughed with her and at him.  He felt himself colour up and try to laugh back. (And it was oddly like his attempt to propitiate Form I when it had gibed him on that bitter pilgrimage from desk to desk.) He took his place at her right hand.  He could see Cosgrave half-way down the table, and his thin, freckled face with its look of absurd happiness.  He was unselfishly overjoyed that his friend should have been thus signalled out for honour.  Perhaps he harboured some crazy certainty that after this Stonehouse would understand and even share his infatuation.  He caught Robert’s eye and smiled and nodded triumphantly.

“Now you see what she’s really like, don’t you?”

A string band, hidden in the orchestra under a roof of palms, played the first bars of her dance, and then stopped short and waited solemnly.  She still stood, glass in hand.