He lashed out at her.

“—­and too poor.  My God, you’re no better than a woman of the streets.”

She assented with a certain gravity.

“C’est bien vrai, ca—­bien vrai.  I was born in ze gutter—­I crawl out of ze gutter by myself.  I keep out of ze gutter—­always.  And I don’t cry and wring my ’ands when people try to kick me back again.  I kick them.  I look after myself.  Monsieur Cosgrave—­and all those others—­they must look after themselves too.  Do you think they bother about me if I become ennuyeuse—­like them—­and cry because they don’t love me and like some leetle girl in ze chorus better?  Not they.  They want fun and life from me—­and I give them that.  When they want more they can—­’ow you say?—­get out?”

He stared at her in white-hot detestation.

“I see.  I’ve just wasted my time.  You’re—­you’re as infamous as they say.  You’re taking everything he has, and now he can go and hang himself.  You’re worse than a woman of the streets because you’re more clever.”

She kissed her fingers at him in good-humoured farewell.  “I like you ver’ much—­quand meme,” she said.  “Next time I come and call on you, per’aps!”

2

That same night Cosgrave, frustrated at the theatre, tried to force an entrance to the Kensington house, and the old woman, seconded by a Japanese man-servant, flung him out again and into the arms of a policeman who promptly arrested him.  Stonehouse went bail for him, and there was a strange, frantic scene in his own rooms.

For this was not the gentle young man who had met Connie Edwards’ infidelity with an apathetic resignation.  He was violent and indignant.  His sense of outrage was a sort of intoxication which gave an extraordinary forcefulness to his whole bearing.  He stormed and threatened—­the misery that stared out of his haggard blue eyes shrivelling in the heat of an almost animal fury. (And yet he stammered too—­which was comically what the other Rufus Cosgrave would have done.)

“I—­I love her.  I’ve never loved anyone else.  That Connie business—­a b-boy and girl affair—­a silly flirtation—­this—­the real thing.  I—­I’m a m-man now.  N-no one’s going to play fast and loose with me.  No, by God!  I’ll see her—­she’s got to have it out with me.  I’ve a right to an explanation at least—­and by God I’ll have one!”

“For what?” Stonehouse asked.

“She loved me,” Cosgrave retorted.

“I don’t believe it.”

“You d-don’t believe it?  W-what do you know about it?  Didn’t she behave as though she did?  Didn’t she go about with me?  Didn’t she take things from me—­no decent woman would have taken unless she loved me?”

“She doesn’t happen to be a decent woman,” Stonehouse observed.  “To do her justice she doesn’t pretend to be one.”

Cosgrave advanced upon him as though he would have struck him across the face.  But he stopped in time, not from remorse, but as though pulled up by a revelation of maddening absurdity.