hen:

"Bert, do you know you left the front door open?"

Idiotically and uxoriously floated from the inner bedroom: "Did I, pussy
cat? Puss must shut it then."

Daisy dug Michael violently in the ribs to express her inward hilarity;
then suddenly she pulled him to her and kissed him roughly. In another
second he was in the lamplight of Little Quondam Street. As in a
nightmare it converged before him: a lean dog was routing in some
garbage: a drunken man, reeling along the pavement opposite, abused him
in queer disjointed obscenities without significance.

Barnes was sitting in Michael's room, when he got back to Leppard
Street.

"What ho," he said sleepily. "You've been enjoying yourself with that
piece, then?"

Michael regarded him angrily.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, chuck it, Fane. You needn't look so solemn; she's not a bad bit of
goods, either. I've heard of her before."

Michael turned away from him. He knew it would be useless to try to
convince Barnes that there was nothing between him and Daisy. Moreover,
if he told the true tale of the evening, he would only make himself out
utterly absurd. It was a pity that an evening which had promised such a
reward for his theories should now be tainted. But when Barnes had
slouched upstairs to bed, Michael realized how little his insinuations
had mattered. The adventure had been primarily a comic experience; it
had displayed him once more grotesquely reflected in the underworld's
distorting mirror.

On the following night Michael went to the Cafe d'Orange, and heard
Daisy's account of the wonderful way in which she had fooled Bert
Saunders.

"But really, you know," she said. "It did give me a turn. Fancy him
coming back all of a sudden like that, and bringing in that fighting
fellow. What a terrible thing, if Bert had found out you was in there
and put him up to bashing your face. Oh, but Bert's all right with his
pussy-cat."

"But why didn't you let me stay where I was?" Michael asked. "And
introduce me quite calmly. He couldn't have said anything."

"Couldn't he?" Daisy cried. "I reckon he could then. I reckon he could
have said a lot. If he hadn't, I'd have given him the chuck right away.
I don't want no fellow hanging around me that hasn't got the pluck to go
for anyone he finds messing about with his girl. _Couldn't_ he have said
anything?"

Michael was again face to face with topsyturvydom. It really was time to
meditate on the absurdity of trying