Vera protested that it was not her fault, it was not Lawrence’s fault that Nicky had met Desmond.  She had never asked them to meet each other.  She did not deny that it was in her house they had met; but she had not introduced them.  Desmond had introduced herself, on the grounds that she knew Dorothy.  Vera suspected that, from the first moment when she had seen him there—­by pure accident—­she had marked him down.  Very likely she had wriggled into Dorothy’s Suffrage meeting on purpose.  She was capable of anything.

Not that Vera thought there was any need for Frances to worry.  It was most unlikely that Desmond’s business with Nicky could be serious.  For one thing she was too young herself to care for anybody as young as Nicky.  For another she happened to be in the beginning, or the middle, certainly nowhere near the end of a tremendous affair with Headley Richards.  As she was designing the dresses and the scenery for the new play he was putting on at the Independent Theatre, Vera argued very plausibly that the affair had only just started, and that Frances must allow it a certain time to run.

“I hope to goodness that the Richards man will marry her.”

“My dear, how can he?  He’s married already to a nice little woman that he isn’t half tired of yet.  Desmond was determined to have him and she’s got him; but he’s only taken her in his stride, as you may say.  I don’t suppose he cares very much one way or another.  But with Desmond it’s a point of honour.”

“What’s a point of honour?”

“Why, to have him.  Not to be left out.  Besides, she always said she could take him from poor little Ginny Richards, and she’s done it.  That was another point of honour.”

With a calmness that was horrible to Frances Vera weighed her friend Desmond’s case.  To Frances it was as if she had never known Vera.  Either Vera had changed or she had never known her.  She had never known women, or men either, who discussed such performances with calmness.  Vera herself hadn’t made her infidelities a point of honour.

These were the passions and the thoughts of Lawrence Stephen’s and of Desmond’s world; these were the things it took for granted.  These people lived in a moral vortex; they whirled round and round with each other; they were powerless to resist the swirl.  Not one of them had any other care than to love and to make love after the manner of the Vortex.  This was their honour, not to be left out of it, not to be left out of the vortex, but to be carried away, to be sucked in, and whirl round and round with each other and the rest.

The painter girl Desmond was horrible to Frances.

And all the time her mind was busy with one question:  “Do you think Nicky knows?”

“I’m perfectly sure he doesn’t.”

“Perhaps—­if he did—­”

“No, my dear, that’s no good.  If you tell him he won’t believe it.  You’ll have all his chivalry up in arms.  And you’ll be putting into his head what may never come into it if he’s left alone.  And you’ll be putting it into Desmond’s head.”