“Gawd Almighty, and Little Connie K.O.’ed in the first round by an untested hypo—­hypo——­ What was it, Ruffles dear? (Oh, do stop squeezing my hand!  This isn’t the pictures, and it’s a match I want—­not love.) An untested hypothesis.  Thank you, dearie.  I wonder if He’s feeling as sore about it as I am?”

She gurgled over her cigarette, and Cosgrave smiled at everyone in turn, as though he had said aloud, “Isn’t she a splendid joke?” He looked almost mystically happy.

“Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven,” Mr. Ricardo muttered.  “Mark it, mark it, Robert—­the shallow thinking, shallow jesting, shallow living——­”

Miss Edwards winked at Francey, and Francey looked back at her with her understanding kindliness.  It seemed to Robert that ever since Connie Edwards had burst into the room Francey had changed.  The change was subtle and difficult to lay hold of, like Francey herself.  Mentally she was always moving about, quietly, light-footedly, just as she had done among the bricks and rubble of their old playground, peering thoughtfully at things which nobody else saw or looking at them from some new point of view.  You couldn’t be sure what they were or why they interested her.  And now—­he had almost seen her do it—­she had shifted her position, come over to Connie Edward’s side, and was gazing over her shoulder, with her own brown head tilted a little on one ear, and was saying in Connie’s vernacular: 

“Well, so that’s how it looks to you?  And, I say, you’re right.  It’s a scream——­”

In her mysterious way she had found something she liked in Connie Edwards, with her awful hat and her outrageous, three-inch heels and her common prettiness.  Cosgrave obviously was crazy about her.  He seemed to cling to her because she had an insatiable hunger for the things he couldn’t afford.  One could see that he had tried to model himself to her taste.  He wore a gardenia and a spotted tie.  And, bearing these insignia of vulgarity, he looked more than ever pathetic and over-delicate.

Cosgrave was an idiot who had lost his balance.  But Francey was another matter.  The Francey who had asked “And are you a good little boy?” accepted Connie Edwards without question.  Because it was ridiculous to be hurt about it Robert grew angry with her and frowned away from her, and talked to Mr. Ricardo as though there were no one else in the room.

“I can’t think why they didn’t take it, sir.  It’s fine stuff.  A shade too long for a magazine article.  It may have been that, of course.”

But Mr. Ricardo bent down and began to gather up his manuscript.  The paper was of all kinds and sizes, covered with crabbed writing and fierce erasures.  It was oddly like himself—­disordered, a little desperate, not very clean.  When he had all the sheets together he sat with them hugged against his breast and bent closer to Christine, speaking in a mysterious whisper.