ho was drawing the last curtain, turned round; his
tall figure was poised awkwardly against the wall, his face, unsuited to
diplomacy, had a look as of flesh being beaten. If weals had started up
across it, Noel would not have been surprised.

He said with painful slowness:

"I don't exactly know; we had hardly begun, had we?"

"The night is young," said Leila. "Go on while I just take off my
things."

She rose with the cigarette between her lips, and went into the inner
room. In passing, she gave Noel a look. What there was in that look,
the girl could never make clear even to herself. Perhaps a creature shot
would gaze like that, with a sort of profound and distant questioning,
reproach, and anger, with a sort of pride, and the quiver of death. As
the door closed, Fort came right across the room.

"Go to her;" cried Noel; "she wants you. Can't you see, she wants you?"

And before he could move, she was at the door. She flew downstairs, and
out into the moonlight. The taxi, a little way off, was just beginning
to move away; she ran towards it, calling out:

"Anywhere! Piccadilly!" and jumping in, blotted herself against the
cushions in the far corner.

She did not come to herself, as it were, for several minutes, and then
feeling she 'could no longer bear the cab, stopped it, and got out.
Where was she? Bond Street! She began, idly, wandering down its narrow
length; the fullest street by day, the emptiest by night. Oh! it had been
horrible! Nothing said by any of them--nothing, and yet everything
dragged out--of him, of Leila, of herself! She seemed to have no pride
or decency left, as if she had been caught stealing. All her happy
exhilaration was gone, leaving a miserable recklessness. Nothing she did
was right, nothing turned out well, so what did it all matter? The
moonlight flooding down between the tall houses gave her a peculiar heady
feeling. "Fey" her father had called her. She laughed. 'But I'm not
going home,' she thought. Bored with the street's length; she turned off,
and was suddenly in Hanover Square. There was the Church, grey-white,
where she had been bridesmaid to a second cousin, when she was fifteen.
She seemed to see it all again--her frock, the lilies in her hand, the
surplices of the choir, the bride's dress, all moonlight-coloured, and
unreal. 'I wonder what's become of her!' she thought. 'He's dead, I
expect, like Cyril!' She saw her father's face as he was marryin