ing
from the elaborately tousled head.

They greeted her with hand-clapping and laughter, and she held out her
thin arms, embracing them as old friends. In her attitude and in her
eyes which passed rapidly from one to another, there was good-humoured
understanding. She knew probably what the more immaculate among them
thought of her, and that they were there to boast about it as English
people boast of having visited Montmartre at midnight. It was daring
and amusing to be at this woman's notorious dinners. They thought they
patronized her, whatever else they knew. But in reality the joke was
on her side.

"_Allons_--to ze feast, friends."

She had seen Robert Stonehouse, and she went straight to him, waving
the rest aside like a flock of importunate pigeons, and took his arm.
"You and I lead the way, _Monsieur le docteur_."

He did not answer. He was glad that she had signalled him out. It
smoothed his raw pride. And yet he thought: "This is her way of making
fun of me." And he hated her and the scented warmth of her slim body
as it brushed lightly against his. He hated his own excited triumph.
For the first time he became aware of something definitely abnormal in
himself, as though a dead skin had been stripped off his senses and he
had begun to see and hear with a primitive and stupefying clearness.

The rest followed them noisily along grimy, winding passages and
between dusty wedges of improbable landscapes out on to the stage. A
long table had been laid in the midst of the stereotyped drawing-room,
which formed the scene of her grotesque dancing, and absurdly elaborate
waiters in powdered hair and knee-breeches hovered in the wings. They
were not real waiters, and from the moment they came out into the
footlights the guests themselves became the chorus of a musical comedy.
It was difficult to believe in the over-abundant flowers with which the
table was strewn or in the champagne lying ostentatiously in wait.

The curtain had been left up, and the dim and dingy auditorium gaped
dismally at them. The empty seats were threatening as a silent,
starving mob pressed against the windows of a feasting-house. But the
woman on Stonehouse's arm waved to them.

"I like it so. I see all my friends there--my old friends who are
gone--God knows where. They sit and laugh and clap and nod to one
another. They say: '_Voyons_, our Gyp still 'aving a good time.' And
I kiss my 'and to them all."

She kissed