Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom. "I
want music and dancing and light, and beautiful things and faces; but I
never get them."

"No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a place which
will give you that. Fox-trots and ragtime and paint and powder and glare
and half-drunken young men, and women with red lips you can get them in
plenty. But rhythm and beauty and charm never. In Brussels when I was
younger I saw much 'life' as they call it, but not one lovely thing
unspoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth. Ah! you may smile, but I
know what I am talking of. Happiness never comes when you are looking
for it, mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature and in real art, never in
these false silly make believes. There is a place just here where we
Belgians go; would you like to see how true my words are?

"Oh, yes!"

"Tres-bien! Let us go in?"

They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass compartments
which shot them out into a shining corridor. At the end of this the
painter looked at Noel and seemed to hesitate, then he turned off from
the room they were about to enter into a room on the right. It was
large, full of gilt and plush and marble tables, where couples were
seated; young men in khaki and older men in plain clothes, together or
with young women. At these last Noel looked, face after face, while they
were passing down a long way to an empty table. She saw that some were
pretty, and some only trying to be, that nearly all were powdered and
had their eyes darkened and their lips reddened, till she felt her own
face to be dreadfully ungarnished: Up in a gallery a small band was
playing an attractive jingling hollow little tune; and the buzz of talk
and laughter was almost deafening.

"What will you have, mademoiselle?" said the painter. "It is just nine
o'clock; we must order quickly."

"May I have one of those green things?"

"Deux cremes de menthe," said Lavendie to the waiter.

Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile hovering
about his face. She was busy looking at the faces of women whose eyes,
furtively cold and enquiring, were fixed on her; and at the faces of men
with eyes that were furtively warm and wondering.

"I wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?" she said, putting the
glass of green stuff to her lips. "Is it nice? It smells of peppermint."

"A beautiful colour. Good luck, mademoiselle!" and he chinked his glass