with the
young journalist as his deputy. He liked to invite people and to pay
for them, and disliked to be invited and paid for. He was never inwardly
content on any occasion unless a great deal of money was spent, and he
could be sure enough of the large amount only when he himself spent it.
He was too simple for conceit or for pride of purse, but always felt
any arrangements shabby and sneaking as to which the expense hadn't been
referred to him. He never named what he paid for anything. Also Delia
had made him understand that if they should go to Saint-Germain as
guests of the artist and his friend Mr. Flack wouldn't be of the
company: she was sure those gentlemen wouldn't rope HIM in. In fact
she was too sure, for, though enjoying him not at all, Charles Waterlow
would on this occasion have made a point of expressing by an act of
courtesy his sense of obligation to a man who had brought him such a
subject. Delia's hint however was all-sufficient for her father; he
would have thought it a gross breach of friendly loyalty to take part in
a festival not graced by Mr. Flack's presence. His idea of loyalty was
that he should scarcely smoke a cigar unless his friend was there to
take another, and he felt rather mean if he went round alone to get
shaved. As regards Saint-Germain he took over the project while George
Flack telegraphed for a table on the terrace at the Pavilion Henri
Quatre. Mr. Dosson had by this time learned to trust the European
manager of the Reverberator to spend his money almost as he himself
would.

IV

Delia had broken out the evening they took Mr. Probert to the circus;
she had apostrophised Francie as they each sat in a red-damask chair
after ascending to their apartments. They had bade their companions
farewell at the door of the hotel and the two gentlemen had walked
off in different directions. But upstairs they had instinctively not
separated; they dropped into the first places and sat looking at each
other and at the highly-decorated lamps that burned night after night
in their empty saloon. "Well, I want to know when you're going to
stop," Delia said to her sister, speaking as if this remark were a
continuation, which it was not, of something they had lately been
saying.

"Stop what?" asked Francie, reaching forward for a marron.

"Stop carrying-on the way you do--with Mr. Flack."

Francie stared while she consumed her marron; then she replied in
her small flat patient voice: "W