“And when I come off ze manager kiss me on both cheeks. Et c’etait fait.”

They applauded joyously.  Her brutal egotism was a good joke.  They expected nothing else from her.  She was like an animal whose cruelty and cunning one could observe without moral qualms.

“It was a mean thing to have done,” Stonehouse said loudly and truculently—­“a treacherous thing.”

A shadow was on Cosgrave’s face.  He leant towards her, almost pleading.

“And La—­La—­what did you call her?  La Jolleta—­what became of her?”

She made a graphic gesture.

“She went into the sack, little one—–­into the sack.  She was old.  One should go gracefully.”

“You too,” Stonehouse said, in a savage undertone.

“I——­ Oh, no, jamais, jamais.”  She lifted the monstrous crest of plumage from her head and set it in the midst of the flowers and rumpled up her hair till she was like the child riding the fat pony.  “You see yourself—­I never grow old, my friend.”

“You are older already,” he persisted.

But the man opposite broke in again.  He leant towards Stonehouse, his inflamed eye through the staring monocle fixing him with an extraordinary tipsy earnestness.

“No, doctor, you are mis-mistaken.  It would be intolerable—­you understand—­quite intolerable.  There are things that—­that must not be true—­as there are other things that must be true.  We’ve staked our last penny on it, sir, and we’ve got to win.  Mademoiselle here knows all about it, and she’ll play the game.  A sport, doctor, a sport.  Won’t let old friends go bankrupt—­no—­certainly not.”

They laughed at him.  It seemed unlikely that he himself knew what he was talking about.  But he shook his head and remained sunk in solemn meditation, twirling the stem of his glass between thick, unsteady fingers.  The girl next him nudged him disgustedly.

“Oh, wake up!  You’ll be crying in a minute.  Talk of something else.”

“Tell us the story of the Duke and the Black Opal, Gyp.”

She waved them off.

“No—­no—­that is not discreet.  One must not tell tales.  That might frighten someone ’ere who loves me.”

And she looked at Stonehouse, a little malicious and insolently, childishly sure.  He leant towards her, speaking in an undertone, trying to stare her down.

“Do you mean me, Mademoiselle?”

“And why not, Monsieur le docteur?  Would it be so strange?  You say you love nobody.  But it seems you love ze poor fat Moretti—­terribly, terribly, no doubt, so that you almost break your small ’eart for ’er.  And per’aps someone else too.  You say you don’t drink—­but you are just a leetle drunk already.  You are not different from ze rest.  I tell you that before—­and I know.  I am a connoisseur.  It is written—­’ere in the eyes and in the mouth.  It is dangerous, the way you live. Quant a moi—­I don’t want you, my friend—­we two—­that would be an eruption—­a disaster—­I should be afraid.”