first plunge
affects a man. It was like taking a first step which signified
something. As they sat at lunch, he looked around him and recognised
easily the types which he saw. Everybody was doing what he was doing;
everybody was out for pleasure with a flavouring of risk in it. Powder
and rouge and fur coats were like a uniform, so universal they were;
and as he looked around and saw the army of pleasure-women whose
company men purchased upon the basis on which you could purchase
things at the Stores, his would-be gaiety failed him somewhat and he
was a little weary.

Roselle found him dull.

They lunched, and talked, and the talk had to have a silly
meretricious flavour in it which tired him further; in the afternoon
they walked on the front; and they went to another hotel for tea.
There was a blaring band and much noise and laughter from all the
pleasure-people. The air was the air of a hothouse where strange,
forced and unnatural exotics bloom to please strange, forced and
unnatural tastes.

Osborn did not know why he found himself so sick, and so soon, of
what, to the woman at his side, was the breath of her life; he was
vexed and disappointed that to him the day was so stupid and so
savourless.

If the pleasures of men failed him, what was left?

He was thinking definitely while they drove on the much-trafficked
road back to more gaudy lights and noise, the lights and noise of
town; and he wondered how to fill the emptiness of his heart, how to
appease the restless burning of his brain, and stifle before they
could cry out all the dear things his soul wanted. He looked at the
woman by his side, insatiable, greedy, stupid, nothing to all
appearances but a beautiful body, and he asked himself if she could do
it, or if she could not. And while he knew, right down in him, that
she could not fulfil a fraction of his needs, he desired so much to
believe that she could, that, in spite of his weariness with this
miscalled business of pleasure, he made hot love to her all the way
back.

Over the dinner-table at Pagani's he advanced a farther step upon the
road which he was resolved to walk with her, failing other
companionship.

"Roselle," he said, deliberately, "this isn't enough. How long are you
going to play about with me like a beautiful pussy cat? I've been very
good, haven't I? When I think of what a good boy I've been I could
laugh." He laughed deeply. "You know, I could love you a lot. Why
don't you giv