“You are ver’ kind.”

He showed her to the door, and rang the bell for the servant.  From his vantage point he saw the pale-blue chauffeur hold open the door of the pale-blue limousine.  A few loiterers gaped.  By an ironical chance a barrel-organ in the next street began to grind out the riotous, familiar gallop.  It sounded far-off like a jeering echo: 

  “I’m Gyp Labelle;
  If you dance with me
  You dance to my tune. . .”

A danse macabre.  He wondered if she had brains or heart enough to appreciate the full bitterness of that chance.  He could see her, in his mind’s eye, cowering back among the pale-blue cushions.

The next morning he received a note from her and a ticket for the first night of “Mademoiselle Pantalonne”—­“with her regards and thanks.”

3

He went.  In the morning he had tossed the ticket aside, scornful and outraged by such a poor gesture of bravado.  But the night brought the old restlessness.  He was driven by curiosity that he believed was professional and impersonal.  It was natural enough that he should want to see how a woman of her stuff acted under sentence of death.  But once in the theatre h e became aware of a black and solitary pride because he alone of all these people could taste the full flavour of her performance.  He had become omniscient.  He saw behind the scenes.  Whilst the orchestra played its jaunty overture he watched her.  He saw her stare into her glass and dab on the paint, thicker and thicker, knowing now why she needed so much more, shrinking from the skull that was beginning to peer through the thin mask of flesh and blood.  He foresaw the moment, probably before the footlights, when the naked horror of it all would leap out on her and tear her down.  Even in that she would no doubt seek the consolation of notoriety.  It would be in all the papers.  If she had the nerve to carry on people would crowd to see her, as in the Roman days they had crowded to the circus (gloating and stroking themselves secretly, thinking:  “It is not I who am dying").  Or she would seek dramatic refuge in her absurd palace and surround herself with tragic glamour, making use of her own death as she had used the death of that infatuated and unhappy prince.

And yet he was sick at heart.  In flashes he saw his own attitude as something hideous and abnormal.  Then again he justified it, as he had always justified it.  He found himself arguing the whole matter out with Francey Wilmot—­a cool and reasoned exposition such as he had been incapable of at the crisis of their relationship. ("This woman is a malignant growth.  Nature destroys her.  Do you pretend to feel regret or pity?”) But though he imagined the whole scene—­saw himself as authoritative and convincing—­he could not re-create Francey Wilmot.  She remained herself.  Her eyes, fixed on him with that remembered look of candid and questioning tenderness, blazed up into an anger as unexpectedly fierce and uncompromising.  And he was not so strong.  He had overworked all his life.  Starved too often.  The ground slipped from under his feet.