y, didn't you like the praise? Weren't you just a
little bit intoxicated?"

"Did I look intoxicated?"

"No-no. You carried it fairly well."

"Just at first, perhaps, just at first it goes to your head a bit. Then
you get sick of it, and you don't want ever to have any more of it
again. And all the time it makes you feel such a silly ass."

"You were certainly not cut out for a celebrity."

"But the awful thing is that when you've swallowed all the praise you
can't get rid of the people. They come swarming and tearing and
clutching at you, and bizzing in your ear when you want to be quiet. I
feel as if I were being buried alive under awful avalanches of people."

"I told you you would be."

"If," she cried, "they'd only kill you outright. But they throttle you.
You fight for breath. They let go and then they're at you again. They
come telling you how wonderful you are and how they adore your work; and
not one of them cares a rap about it. If they did they'd leave you alone
to do it."

"Poor Jinny," he murmured.

"Why am I marked out for this? Why is it, George? Why should they take
me and leave you alone?"

"It's your emotional quality that fetches them. But it's inconceivable
how _you_'ve been fetched."

"I wanted to see what the creatures were like. Oh, George, that I
should be so punished when I only wanted to see what they were like."

"Poor Jinny. Poor gregarious Jinny."

She shook her head.

"It was so insidious. I can't think, I really can't think how it began."

"It began with those two spluttering imbecilities you asked me to dine
with."

"Oh no, poor things, they haven't hurt me. They've gone on to dine at
other tables. They're in it, too. They're torn and devoured. They dine
and are dined on."

"But, my dear child, you must stop it."

"If I could. If I could only break loose and get away."

"Get away. What keeps you?"

"Everything keeps me."

"By everything you mean----?"

"London. London does something to your brain. It jogs it and shakes it;
and all the little ideas that had gone to sleep in their little cells
get up and begin to dance as if they heard music. Everything wakes them
up, the streams of people, the eyes and the faces. It's you and Nina and
Laura. It's ten thousand things. Can't you understand, George?"

"It's playing the devil with your nerves, Jinny."

"Not when I go about in it alone. That's the secret."

"It looks as if you were alone a lot, doesn't it?" He gl