“Foa?  Who is Foa?”

“What!  You do not know Foa?  In order to succeed it is necessary, it is essential, to play at Foa’s.  That alone gives the cachet.  Dauphin told me last week.  He arranged it.  After having played at Foa’s all is possible.  Dauphin was about to abandon me when he met Foa.  Now I am ruined.  This afternoon after the tennis I was going to Durand’s to get the new Caprice of Roussel—­he is an intimate friend of Foa.  I should have studied it in five days.  They would have been ravished by the attention ....  But why talk I thus?  No, I could not have played Caprice to please them.  I am cursed.  I will never again touch the violin, I swear it.  What am I?  Do I not live on the money lent to me regularly by Mademoiselle Thompkins and Mademoiselle Nickall?”

“You don’t, Musa?” Audrey burst out in English.

“Yes, yes!” said Musa violently.  “But last month, from Mademoiselle Nickall—­nothing!  She is in London; she forgets.  It is better like that.  Soon I shall be playing in the Opera orchestra, fourth desk, one hundred francs a month.  That will be the end.  There can be no other.”

Instead of admiring the secret charity of Tommy and Nick, which she had never suspected, Audrey was very annoyed by it.  She detested it and resented it.  And especially the charity of Miss Thompkins.  She considered that from a woman with eyes and innuendoes like Tommy’s charity amounted to a sneer.

“It is extremely unsatisfactory,” she said, dropping on to Miss Ingate’s sofa.

Not another word was spoken.  Audrey tapped her foot.  Musa creaked in the basket chair.  He avoided her eyes, but occasionally she glared at him like a schoolmistress.  Then her gaze softened—­he looked so ill, so helpless, so hopeless.  She wanted to light a cigarette for him, but she was somehow bound to the sofa.  She wanted him to go—­she hated the prospect of his going.  He could not possibly go, alone, to his solitary room.  Who would tend him, soothe him, put him to bed?  He was an infant....

Then, after a long while, Miss Ingate entered sharply.  Audrey coughed and sprang up.

“Oh!” ejaculated Miss Ingate.

“I—­I think I shall just change my boots,” said Audrey, smoothing out the short white skirt.  And she disappeared into the dressing-room that gave on to the studio.

As soon as she was gone, Miss Ingate went close up to Musa’s chair.  He had not moved.

She said, smiling, with the corners of her mouth well down: 

“Do you see that door, young man?”

And she indicated the door.

When Audrey came back into the studio.

“Audrey,” cried Miss Ingate shrilly.  “What you been doing to Musa?  As soon as you went out he up vehy quickly and ran away.”

At this information Audrey was more obviously troubled and dashed than Miss Ingate had ever seen her, in Paris.  She made no answer at all.  Fortunately, lying on the table in front of the mirror was a letter for Miss Ingate which had arrived by the evening post.  Audrey went for it, pretending to search, and then handed it over with a casual gesture.