er."

"I should think you couldn't. I wonder you can find yourself in this
room."

"Come along," urged the owner of it. "We must begin. Maurice and Jenny.
Then Fuz and Maudie, Ronnie and Irene, Cunningham and Madge. Any more
you can think of?"

"You don't mean to say you've taken that unnatural piece of paper just
to write those few names which we could have thought of in our heads.
What would you do with him?"

"We want another eight," Maurice declared.

"Oh, no, eight's plenty."

"Perhaps it is," he agreed. "Well, now, Maurice will be Theophile
Gautier--no, he won't--the red waistcoat knocks him out--Edmond de
Goncourt? No, he had a mustache. Chopin? Long hair. Look here, I don't
think we'll be anybody in particular. We'll just be ladies and gentlemen
of the period. You know you girls have got to wear crinolines and fichus
and corkscrew curls."

"Like we used to wear in Boheme in the Opera?"

"That's it. You must see about your dresses at once. Good ones will cost
about ten pounds to hire, and that ought to include some decent paste."

"We sha'n't have to pay for _our_ tickets."

"Good. Four guineas saved. Dresses? Say twenty pounds for the eight of
us. Supper with fizz another ten quid. Four salmon-colored taxis with
tips, ten pounds."

"How much?" Jenny exclaimed. "Ten pounds just to take us to Covent
Garden Ball and back?"

"Ah, but I've a plan. These salmon-colored taxis are going to be the
_chef d'oeuvre_ as well as the _hors d'oeuvre_ of the entertainment.
Hush, it's a secret. Let me see, our tickets--four guineas--forty-four
pounds four shillings. Well, say fifty quid to include all tips and
breakfast."

"Well, I think it's too much," Jenny declared.

"Not too much for an evening that shall be famous over all evenings--an
evening that you, my Jenny, will remember when you're an ancient old
woman--an evening that we'll talk over for the rest of our lives."

While Maurice was speaking, the shadow of a gigantic doubt passed over
Jenny's mind. She endured one of those moments when only the profound
uselessness of everything has any power to impress the reason. She
suffered a complete loss of faith and hope. The moment was one of those
black abysses before which the mind is aghast at effort and conceives
annihilation. In the Middle Ages such an experience would have been
ascribed to the direct and personal influence of Satan.

"What's the matter?" Maurice asked. "You look as if you didn't believ