combined, meant nothing more to her than if it had been Medoc.
She drank it because it was there at her hand, as she would have drunk
water, without savouring it, without any realisation of the enormity of
the crime. Yet though it meant nothing, nothing at least of which she
was aware, the royal cru was affecting her. It modified and mollified,
admonishing her that this man was an inoffensive insect who,
circumstances favouring, might, as Ma Tamby when inserting the flea had
told her, put her father on his feet.

In just what the favouring circumstances could consist, the fallen star
had not bothered to indicate, and she had not bothered because they were
too obvious and also because she was sure that Cassy was not insane.

Paliser abandoned his cigarette. "If you like, we might look in at the
Metropolitan. I believe I have a box."

Apart from down-stage and the centre of it, apart, too, from the flys
and the dressing-rooms, Cassy's imagination had not as yet conceived
anything more beckoning than a box at the opera, even though, as on this
occasion, the opera happened to be a concert. "Why, yes. Only----"
Pausing, she looked about. The imperial lady had gone.

"Only what?" Paliser very needlessly asked for he knew.

"I fear I am a bit overdressed."

"Not for Sunday. The house will be full and nobody in it. Besides, what
do you care?"

Cassy shrugged. "Personally, not a rap. It was of you I was thinking."

Paliser, who had been signing the check and feeing the waiter, looked at
her. "I did not know that you were so considerate."

Cassy, in surprise not at him, but at herself, laughed. "Nor did I."

Paliser stood up and drew back her chair. "Be careful. You might become
cynical. It is in thinking of others that cynicism begins."

The platitude slipped from him absently. He had no wish for the concert,
no wish to hear Berlinese trulls and bubonic bassi bleat. But, for the
tolerably delicate enterprise that he had in hand, there were the
preliminary steps which could only be hastened slowly and anything
slower than the Metropolitan on a Sunday night, it was beyond him to
conjecture.

But though on that evening a basso did bleat, it may be that he was not
bubonic. Moreover he was followed by a soprano who, whether trullish or
not, at any rate was not Berlinese and whose voice had the lusciousness
of a Hawaiian pineapple. But the selections, which were derived from old
Italian cupboards, displeased Paliser, who