“What a fug!” said Osborn.

“All right,” said Roselle, “go away, then!  I shall be an hour dressing.  You’d better wait in the sitting-room; there’s a Sunday paper there, and a fire if the woman’s lighted it.”

The woman was kindling the fire hastily and grumbling when he went into the sitting-room, still in its state of early morning frowsiness.  The curtains had been pulled aside to let in the morning, but the windows were not yet open, and empty liqueur glasses had not been removed from the table.

“It’s early for visitors,” grumbled the charwoman.  “I don’t reckon to come till nine on a Sunday morning, and I start with the washing-up, and none of the rooms ain’t done.”

“I don’t care a straw,” said Osborn irritably, walking to a window.  He flung it up and heard the drab creature behind him shudder resentfully at the inrush of raw air.  He put his hands in his pockets, staring out and emitting a tuneless whistle.  All was awry, unprofitable and stale as the cigarette smoke of which the place reeked.

Roselle was not an hour dressing, in spite of her threat.  By eleven they were away.

* * * * *

It happened that the only woman Osborn had taken down to Brighton for the day, before he took Roselle, was Marie; and harmless as the proceeding was, it affected him for a while as any first plunge affects a man.  It was like taking a first step which signified something.  As they sat at lunch, he looked around him and recognised easily the types which he saw.  Everybody was doing what he was doing; everybody was out for pleasure with a flavouring of risk in it.  Powder and rouge and fur coats were like a uniform, so universal they were; and as he looked around and saw the army of pleasure-women whose company men purchased upon the basis on which you could purchase things at the Stores, his would-be gaiety failed him somewhat and he was a little weary.

Roselle found him dull.

They lunched, and talked, and the talk had to have a silly meretricious flavour in it which tired him further; in the afternoon they walked on the front; and they went to another hotel for tea.  There was a blaring band and much noise and laughter from all the pleasure-people.  The air was the air of a hothouse where strange, forced and unnatural exotics bloom to please strange, forced and unnatural tastes.

Osborn did not know why he found himself so sick, and so soon, of what, to the woman at his side, was the breath of her life; he was vexed and disappointed that to him the day was so stupid and so savourless.

If the pleasures of men failed him, what was left?