ess. Instinctively she conjugated the verb "to have" always with
the pronoun "I." She concealed, however, all signs of her growing
desperation, and pursued such river pleasures as the winds and rain of
a disagreeable July permitted, as if she had no care in the world; nor
did any "sucking baronet" ever neglect the business of a publisher more
consistently than her attendant spirit, Michael Mont.
To Soames she was a puzzle. He was almost deceived by this careless
gaiety. Almost--because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on
nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at
night. What was she thinking and brooding over into small hours when
she ought to have been asleep? But he dared not ask what was in her
mind; and, since that one little talk in the billiard-room, she said
nothing to him.
In this taciturn condition of affairs it chanced that Winifred invited
them to lunch and to go afterwards to "a most amusing little play, 'The
Beggar's Opera,'" and would they bring a man to make four? Soames,
whose attitude towards theatres was to go to nothing, accepted, because
Fleur's attitude was to go to everything. They motored up, taking
Michael Mont, who, being in his seventh heaven, was found by Winifred
"very amusing." "The Beggar's Opera" puzzled Soames. The people were
unpleasant, the whole thing cynical. Winifred was "intrigued"--by the
dresses. The music too did not displease her. At the Opera, the night
before, she had arrived too early for the Russian Ballet, and found the
stage occupied by singers, for a whole hour pale or apoplectic from
terror lest by some dreadful inadvertence they might drop into a tune.
Michael Mont was enraptured with the whole thing. And all three
wondered what Fleur was thinking of it. But Fleur was not thinking of
it. Her fixed idea stood on the stage and sang with Polly Peachum,
mimed with Filch, danced with Jenny Diver, postured with Lucy Lockit,
kissed, trolled, and cuddled with Macheath. Her lips might smile, her
hands applaud, but the comic old masterpiece made no more impression on
her than if it had been pathetic, like a modern "Revue." When they
embarked in the car to return, she ached because Jon was not sitting
next her instead of Michael Mont. When, at some jolt, the young man's
arm touched hers as if by accident, she only thought: 'If that were
Jon's arm!' When his cheerful voice, tempered by her proximity,
murmured above the sound of the car's p
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