I was aroused from the momentary shock caused by the revelation of this eccentric apartment by an unknown nauseous flavour in my mouth.  I realised it was the cigarette to which I had helped myself from the beautifully chased silver casket I had taken from the mantelpiece.  I eyed the thing and concluded it was made of the very cheapest tobacco, and was what the street urchin calls a “fag.”  I learned afterwards that I was right.  She purchased them at the rate of six for a penny, and smoked them in enormous quantities.  For politeness’ sake I continued to puff at the unclean thing until I nearly made myself sick.  Then, simulating absentmindedness, I threw it into the fire.

Why, in the sacred name of Nicotine, does a luxurious lady like Lola Brandt smoke such unutterable garbage?

On the other hand, the tea which she offered us a few minutes later, and begged us to drink without milk, was the most exquisite I have tasted outside Russia.  She informed us that she got it direct from Moscow.

“I can’t stand your black Ceylon tea,” she remarked, with a grimace.

And yet she could smoke “fags.”  I wondered what other contradictious tastes she possessed.  No doubt she could eat blood puddings with relish and had a discriminating palate for claret.  Truly, a perplexing lady.

“You must find leisure in London a great change after your adventurous career,” said I, by way of polite conversation.

“I just love it.  I’m as lazy as a cat,” she said, settling with her pantherine grace among the cushions.  “Do you know what has been my ambition ever since I was a kid?”

“Whatever of woman’s ambitions you had you must have attained,” said I, with a bow.

“Pooh!” she said.  “You mean that I can have crowds of men falling in love with me.  That’s rubbish.”  She was certainly frank.  “I meant something quite different.  I wonder whether you can understand.  The world used to seem to me divided into two classes that never met—­we performing people and the public, the thousand white faces that looked at us and went away and talked to other white faces and forgot all about performing animals till they came next time.  Now I’ve got what I wanted.  See?  I’m one of the public.”

“And you love Philistia better than Bohemia?” I asked.

She knitted her brows and looked at me puzzled.

“If you want to talk to me,” she said, “you must talk straight.  I’ve had no more education than a tinker’s dog.”

She made this peculiar announcement, not defiantly, not rudely, but appealingly, graciously.  It was not a rebuke for priggishness; it was the unpresentable statement of a fact.  I apologized for a lunatic habit of speech and paraphrased my question.

“In a word,” cried Dale, coming in on my heels with an elucidation of my periphrasis, “what de Gex is driving at is—­Do you prefer respectability to ramping round?”

She turned slowly to him.  “My dear boy, when do you think I was not respectable?”