ve been here by
now. What's the time, kid?"

It was after midnight, and Daisy began to look round anxiously.

"I'm rather worried over Doll," she confided to Michael, "because this
fellow of hers, Hungarian Dave, is a proper little tyke when he turns
nasty. I said to Doll, I said to her, 'Doll, that dirty rotter you're so
soft over'll swing for you before he's done. Why don't you leave him,' I
said, 'and come and live along with me for a bit?'"

"And what did she say?" Michael asked.

But there was no answer, for Daisy had caught sight of Dolly herself
coming down the stairs, and she was now hailing her excitedly.

"Oh, doesn't she look shocking white," exclaimed Daisy. "Doll!" she
shouted, waving to her. "Over here, duck."

The four offensive youths near them in the alcove mimicked her in
exaggerated falsetto.

"---- to you," she flung scornfully at them over her shoulder. There was
a savage directness, a simple coarseness in the phrase that pleased
Michael. It seemed to him that nothing except that could ever be said to
these young men. Whatever else might be urged against the Cafe
d'Orange, at least one was able to hear there a final verdict on
otherwise indescribable humanity.

By this time Dolly Wearne, a rather heavy girl with a long retreating
chin and flabby cheeks, had reached her friend's side. She began
immediately a voluble tale:

"Oh, Daisy, I put it across him straight. I give you my word, I told him
off so as he could hardly look me in the face. 'You call yourself a
man,' I said, 'why, you dirty little alien.' That's what I called him. I
did straight, 'you dirty little---- '"

"This is my friend," interrupted Daisy, indicating Michael, who bowed.
It amused him to see how in the very middle of what was evidently going
to be a breathless and desperate story both the girls could remember the
convention of their profession.

"Pleased to meet you," said Dolly, offering a black kid-gloved hand with
half-a-simper.

"What will you drink?" asked Michael.

"Mine's a brandy and soda, please. 'You dirty little alien,' I said."
Dolly was helter-skelter in the track of her tale again.

"Go on, did you? And what did he say?" asked Daisy admiringly.

"He never said nothing, my dear. What could he say?"

"That's right," nodded Daisy wisely.

"'For two years,' I said, 'you've let a girl keep you,' I said, 'and
then you can go and give one of my rings to that Florrie. Let me get
hold of her,' I said. '