ings in this
mad new house, in this mad new society. He had pulled one out and lain
back, feeling rather ill, because he had eaten nothing and his heart was
beating violently. He hated being there, but he had to make sure. Much
rather would he have been out in the gardens, standing beside one of
those magnolias, watching the stars travel across the bay. "Then
marriage is right," he said to himself. "Where there is real love one
wants to go to church first."

Others who had wearied of the party drifted down to this recess of
peace. An elderly Frenchman with a pointed black beard, and a slim, fair
English boy with tears on his long eyelashes, sat themselves down in two
of these great chairs, with a bottle of wine at their feet and one
glass, from which they drank alternately with an effect of exchanging
vows, while the boy whimpered some confession, sobbing that it would all
never have happened if he had still been with Father Errington of the
Sacred Heart in Liverpool, and the older man repeated paternally,
mystically, and yet with a purring satisfaction, "Little one, do not
grieve. It is always thus when one forgets the Church."

There came later another Frenchman, a fat and very drunken banker, who
sat down at his right and complained from time to time of the lack of
elegance in this debauchery. He wished that these people had left him
alone, and stared at the wall in front of him, where curtains of crimson
brocade and gold galoon hung undrawn between the lustred tiles and the
high windows, black with the outer night but streaked and oiled with
reflections of the inner feast. Opposite there hung a Bouguereau, which
irritated him--nymphs ought not to look as if they had come newly
unguented from a _cabinet de toilette_. Below it stood an immense
Cloisonne vase, about the neck of which was tied a scarlet silk
stocking. He remembered having seen it there on his last visit six
months before. She must have been an exceptionally careless lady. Out
here there were many ladies who were careless of their honour, but most
of them were careful enough about tangible possessions like silk
stockings. A fresh outburst in the babel at the other end of the room
did not make him turn round, though the French banker had cried in an
ecstasy, "_Tiens! c'est atroce!_" and had bounded up the hall. He sat
on, hating this ugly place of his delay, while the Frenchman and the boy
kept up an insincere, voluptuous whisper about God and the comfor