I

That spring they made their first real acquaintance with the garish and tragic night life of Paris that lies open to such people as Stephen Gordon.

Until now they had never gone out much at night except to occasional studio parties, or occasional cafés of the milder sort for a cup of coffee with Barbara and Jamie; but that spring Mary seemed fanatically eager to proclaim her allegiance to Pat’s miserable army. Deprived of the social intercourse which to her would have been both natural and welcome, she now strove to stand up to a hostile world by proving that she could get on without it. The spirit of adventure that had taken her to France, the pluck that had steadied her while in the Unit, the emotional, hotheaded nature of the Celt, these things must now work together in Mary to produce a state of great restlessness, a pitiful revolt against life’s injustice. The blow struck by a weak and thoughtless hand had been even more deadly than Stephen had imagined; more deadly to them both, for that glancing blow coming at a time of apparent success, had torn from them every shred of illusion.

Stephen, who could see that the girl was fretting, would be seized with a kind of sick apprehension, a sick misery at her own powerlessness to provide a more normal and complete existence. So many innocent recreations, so many harmless social pleasures must Mary forego for the sake of their union⁠—and she still young, still well under thirty. And now Stephen came face to face with the gulf that lies between warning and realization⁠—all her painful warnings anent the world had not served to lessen the blow when it fell, had not served to make it more tolerable to Mary. Deeply humiliated Stephen would feel, when she thought of Mary’s exile from Morton, when she thought of the insults this girl must endure because of her loyalty and her faith⁠—all that Mary was losing that belonged to her youth, would rise up at this time to accuse and scourge Stephen. Her courage would flicker like a lamp in the wind, and would all but go out; she would feel less steadfast, less capable of continuing the war, that ceaseless war for the right to existence. Then the pen would slip from her nerveless fingers, no longer a sharp and purposeful weapon. Yes, that spring saw a weakening in Stephen herself⁠—she felt tired, and sometimes very old for her age, in spite of her vigorous mind and body.

Calling Mary she would need to be reassured; and one day she asked her: “How much do you love me?”

Mary answered: “So much that I’m growing to hate⁠ ⁠…” Bitter words to hear on such young lips as Mary’s.

And now there were days when Stephen herself would long for some palliative, some distraction; when her erstwhile success seemed like Dead Sea fruit, her will to succeed a grotesque presumption. Who was she to stand out against the whole world, against those ruthless, pursuing millions bent upon the destruction of her and her kind? And she but one poor, inadequate creature. She would start to pace up and down her study; up and down, up and down, a most desolate pacing; even as years ago her father had paced his quiet study at Morton. Then those treacherous nerves of hers would betray her, so that when Mary came in with David⁠—he a little depressed, sensing something amiss⁠—she would often turn on the girl and speak sharply.

“Where on earth have you been?”

“Only out for a walk. I walked round to Jamie’s, Barbara’s not well; I sent her in a few tins of Brand’s jelly.”

“You’ve no right to go off without letting me know where you’re going⁠—I’ve told you before I won’t have it!” Her voice would be harsh, and Mary would flush, unaware of those nerves that were strained to breaking.

As though grasping at something that remained secure, they would go to see the kind Mademoiselle Duphot, but less often than they had done in the past, for a feeling of guilt would come upon Stephen. Looking at the gentle and foal-like face with its innocent eyes behind the strong glasses, she would think: “We’re here under false pretences. If she knew what we were, she’d have none of us, either. Brockett was right, we should stick to our kind.” So they went less and less to see Mademoiselle Duphot.

Mademoiselle said with her mild resignation: “It is natural, for now our Stévenne is famous. Why should she waste her time upon us? I am more than content to have been her teacher.”

But the sightless Julie shook her head sadly: “It is not like that; you mistake, my sister. I can feel a great desolation in Stévenne-and some of the youngness has gone from Mary. What can it be? My fingers grow blind when I ask them the cause of that desolation.”

“I will pray for them both to the Sacred Heart which comprehends all things,” said Mademoiselle Duphot.

And indeed her own heart would have tried to understand⁠—but Stephen had grown very bitterly mistrustful.

And so now, in good earnest they turned to their kind, for as Puddle had truly divined in the past, it is “like to like” for such people as Stephen. Thus when Pat walked in unexpectedly one day to invite them to join a party that night at the Ideal Bar, Stephen did not oppose Mary’s prompt and all too eager acceptance.

Pat said they were going to do the round. Wanda was coming and probably Brockett. Dickie West the American aviator was in Paris, and she also had promised to join them. Oh, yes, and then there was Valérie Seymour⁠—Valérie was being dug out of her hole by Jeanne Maurel, her most recent conquest. Pat supposed that Valérie would drink lemon squash and generally act as a douche of cold water, she was sure to grow sleepy or disapproving, she was no acquisition to this sort of party. But could they rely upon Stephen’s car? In the cold, grey dawn of the morning after, taxis were sometimes scarce up at Montmartre. Stephen nodded, thinking how absurdly prim Pat looked to be talking of cold, grey dawns and all that they stood for up at Montmartre. After she had left, Stephen frowned a little.

II

The five women were seated at a table near the door when Mary and Stephen eventually joined them. Pat, looking gloomy, was sipping light beer. Wanda, with the fires of hell in her eyes, in the hell of a temper too, drank brandy. She had started to drink pretty heavily again, and had therefore been avoiding Stephen just lately. There were only two new faces at the table, that of Jeanne Maurel, and of Dickie West, the much discussed woman aviator.

Dickie was short, plump and very young; she could not have been more than twenty-one and she still looked considerably under twenty. She was wearing a little dark blue beret; round her neck was knotted an apache scarf⁠—for the rest she was dressed in a neat serge suit with a very well cut double-breasted jacket. Her face was honest, her teeth rather large, her lips chapped and her skin much weather-beaten. She looked like a pleasant and nice-minded schoolboy well soaped and scrubbed for some gala occasion. When she spoke her voice was a little too hearty. She belonged to the younger, and therefore more reckless, more aggressive and self-assured generation; a generation that was marching to battle with much swagger, much sounding of drums and trumpets, a generation that had come after war to wage a new war on a hostile creation. Being mentally very well clothed and well shod, they had as yet left no bloodstained footprints; they were hopeful as yet, refusing point-blank to believe in the existence of a miserable army. They said: “We are as we are; what about it? We don’t care a damn, in fact we’re delighted!” And being what they were they must go to extremes, must quite often outdo men in their sinning; yet the sins that they had were the sins of youth, the sins of defiance born of oppression. But Dickie was in no way exceptionally vile⁠—she lived her life much as a man would have lived it. And her heart was so loyal, so trustful, so kind that it caused her much shame and much secret blushing. Generous as a lover, she was even more so when there could not be any question of loving. Like the horseleech’s daughter, her friends cried: “Give! Give!” and Dickie gave lavishly, asking no questions. An appeal never left her completely unmoved, and suspecting this, most people went on appealing. She drank wine in moderation, smoked Camel cigarettes till her fingers were brown, and admired stage beauties. Her greatest defect was practical joking of the kind that passes all seemly limits. Her jokes were dangerous, even cruel at times⁠—in her jokes Dickie quite lacked imagination.

Jeanne Maurel was tall, almost as tall as Stephen. An elegant person wearing pearls round her throat above a low cut white satin waistcoat. She was faultlessly tailored and faultlessly barbered; her dark, severe Eton crop fitted neatly. Her profile was Greek, her eyes a bright blue⁠—altogether a very arresting young woman. So far she had had quite a busy life doing nothing in particular and everything in general. But now she was Valérie Seymour’s lover, attaining at last to a certain distinction.

And Valérie was sitting there calm and aloof, her glance roving casually round the café, not too critically, yet as though she would say: “Enfin, the whole world has grown very ugly, but no doubt to some people this represents pleasure.”

From the stained bar counter at the end of the room came the sound of Monsieur Pujol’s loud laughter. Monsieur Pujol was affable to his clients, oh, but very, indeed he was almost paternal. Yet nothing escaped his cold, black eyes⁠—a great expert he was in his way, Monsieur Pujol. There are many collections that a man may indulge in; old china, glass, pictures, watches and bibelots; rare editions, tapestries, priceless jewels. Monsieur Pujol snapped his fingers at such things, they lacked life⁠—Monsieur Pujol collected inverts. Amazingly morbid of Monsieur Pujol, and he with the face of an ageing dragoon, and he just married en secondes noces, and already with six legitimate children. A fine, purposeful sire he had been and still was, with his young wife shortly expecting a baby. Oh, yes, the most aggressively normal of men, as none knew better than the poor Madame Pujol. Yet behind the bar was a small, stuffy sanctum in which this strange man catalogued his collection. The walls of the sanctum were thickly hung with signed photographs, and a good few sketches. At the back of each frame was a neat little number corresponding to that in a locked leather notebook⁠—it had long been his custom to write up his notes before going home with the milk in the morning. People saw their own faces but not their numbers⁠—no client suspected that locked leather notebook.

To this room would come Monsieur Pujol’s old cronies for a bock or a petit verre before business; and sometimes, like many another collector, Monsieur Pujol would permit himself to grow prosy. His friends knew most of the pictures by heart; knew their histories too, almost as well as he did; but in spite of this fact he would weary his guests by repeating many a threadbare story.

“A fine lot, n’est-ce pas?” he would say with a grin, “See that man? Ah, yes⁠—a really great poet. He drank himself to death. In those days it was absinthe⁠—they liked it because it gave them such courage. That one would come here like a scared white rat, but Crénom! when he left he would bellow like a bull⁠—the absinthe, of course⁠—it gave them great courage.” Or: “That woman over there, what a curious head! I remember her very well, she was German. Else Weining, her name was⁠—before the war she would come with a girl she’d picked up here in Paris, just a common whore, a most curious business. They were deeply in love. They would sit at a table in the corner⁠—I can show you their actual table. They never talked much and they drank very little; as far as the drink went those two were bad clients, but so interesting that I did not much mind⁠—I grew almost attached to Else Weining. Sometimes she would come all alone, come early. ‘Pu,’ she would say in her hideous French; ‘Pu, she must never go back to that hell.’ Hell! Sacrénom⁠—she to call it hell! Amazing they are, I tell you, these people. Well, the girl went back, naturally she went back, and Else drowned herself in the Seine. Amazing they are⁠—ces invertis, I tell you!”

But not all the histories were so tragic as this one; Monsieur Pujol found some of them quite amusing. Quarrels galore he was able to relate, and light infidelities by the dozen. He would mimic a manner of speech, a gesture, a walk⁠—he was really quite a good mimic⁠—and when he did this his friends were not bored; they would sit there and split their sides with amusement.

And now Monsieur Pujol was laughing himself, cracking jokes as he covertly watched his clients. From where she and Mary sat near the door, Stephen could hear his loud, jovial laughter.

“Lord,” sighed Pat, unenlivened as yet by the beer; “some people do seem to feel real good this evening.”

Wanda, who disliked the ingratiating Pujol, and whose nerves were on edge, had begun to grow angry. She had caught a particularly gross blasphemy, gross even for this age of stupid blaspheming. “Le salaud!” she shouted, then, inflamed by drink, an epithet even less complimentary.

“Hush up, do!” exclaimed the scandalized Pat, hastily gripping Wanda’s shoulder.

But Wanda was out to defend her faith, and she did it in somewhat peculiar language.

People had begun to turn round and stare; Wanda was causing quite a diversion. Dickie grinned and skilfully egged her on, not perceiving the tragedy that was Wanda. For in spite of her tender and generous heart, Dickie was still but a crude young creature, one who had not yet learnt how to shiver and shake, and had thus remained but a crude young creature. Stephen glanced anxiously at Mary, half deciding to break up this turbulent party; but Mary was sitting with her chin on her hand, quite unruffled, it seemed, by Wanda’s outburst. When her eyes met Stephen’s she actually smiled, then took the cigarette that Jeanne Maurel was offering; and something in this placid, self-assured indifference went so ill with her youth that it startled Stephen. She in her turn must quickly light a cigarette, while Pat still endeavoured to silence Wanda.

Valérie said with her enigmatic smile: “Shall we now go on to our next entertainment?”

They paid the bill and persuaded Wanda to postpone her abuse of the ingratiating Pujol. Stephen took one arm, Dickie West the other, and between them they coaxed her into the motor; after which they all managed to squeeze themselves in⁠—that is, all except Dickie, who sat by the driver in order to guide the innocent Burton.

III

At Le Narcisse they surprised what at first appeared to be the most prosaic of family parties. It was late, yet the mean room was empty of clients, for Le Narcisse seldom opened its eyes until midnight had chimed from the church clocks of Paris. Seated at a table with a red and white cloth were the Patron and a lady with a courtesy title. “Madame,” she was called. And with them was a girl, and a handsome young man with severely plucked eyebrows. Their relationship to each other was⁠ ⁠… well⁠ ⁠… all the same, they suggested a family party. As Stephen pushed open the shabby swing door, they were placidly engaged upon playing belotte.

The walls of the room were hung with mirrors thickly painted with cupids, thickly sullied by flies. A faint blend of odours was wafted from the kitchen which stood in proximity to the toilet. The host rose at once and shook hands with his guests. Every bar had its social customs, it seemed. At the Ideal one must share Monsieur Pujol’s lewd jokes; at Le Narcisse one must gravely shake hands with the Patron.

The Patron was tall and exceedingly thin⁠—a clean-shaven man with the mouth of an ascetic. His cheeks were delicately tinted with rouge, his eyelids delicately shaded with kohl; but the eyes themselves were an infantile blue, reproachful and rather surprised in expression.

For the good of the house, Dickie ordered champagne; it was warm and sweet and unpleasantly heady. Only Jeanne and Mary and Dickie herself had the courage to sample this curious beverage. Wanda stuck to her brandy and Pat to her beer, while Stephen drank coffee; but Valérie Seymour caused some confusion by gently insisting on a lemon squash⁠—to be made with fresh lemons. Presently the guests began to arrive in couples. Having seated themselves at the tables, they quickly became oblivious to the world, what with the sickly champagne and each other. From a hidden recess there emerged a woman with a basket full of protesting roses. The stout vendeuse wore a wide wedding ring⁠—for was she not a most virtuous person? But her glance was both calculating and shrewd as she pounced upon the more obvious couples; and Stephen watching her progress through the room, felt suddenly ashamed on behalf of the roses. And now at a nod from the host there was music; and now at a bray from the band there was dancing. Dickie and Wanda opened the ball⁠—Dickie stodgy and firm, Wanda rather unsteady. Others followed. Then Mary leant over the table and whispered:

“Won’t you dance with me, Stephen?”

Stephen hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she got up abruptly and danced with Mary.

The handsome young man with the tortured eyebrows was bowing politely before Valérie Seymour. Refused by her, he passed on to Pat, and to Jeanne’s great amusement was promptly accepted.

Brockett arrived and sat down at the table. He was in his most prying and cynical humour. He watched Stephen with coldly observant eyes, watched Dickie guiding the swaying Wanda, watched Pat in the arms of the handsome young man, watched the whole bumping, jostling crowd of dancers.

The blended odours were becoming more active. Brockett lit a cigarette. “Well, Valérie darling? You look like an outraged Elgin marble. Be kind, dear, be kind; you must live and let live, this is life.⁠ ⁠…” And he waved his soft, white hands. “Observe it⁠—it’s very wonderful, darling. This is life, love, defiance, emancipation!”

Said Valérie with her calm little smile: “I think I preferred it when we were all martyrs!”

The dancers drifted back to their seats and Brockett manoeuvred to sit beside Stephen. “You and Mary dance well together,” he murmured. “Are you happy? Are you enjoying yourselves?”

Stephen, who hated this inquisitive mood, this mood that would feed upon her emotions, turned away as she answered him, rather coldly: “Yes, thanks⁠—we’re not having at all a bad evening.”

And now the Patron was standing by their table; bowing slightly to Brockett he started singing. His voice was a high and sweet baritone; his song was of love that must end too soon, of life that in death is redeemed by ending. An extraordinary song to hear in such a place⁠—melancholy and very sentimental. Some of the couples had tears in their eyes⁠—tears that had probably sprung from champagne quite as much as from that melancholy singing. Brockett ordered a fresh bottle to console the Patron. Then he waved him away with a gesture of impatience.

There ensued more dancing, more ordering of drinks, more dalliance by the amorous couples. The Patron’s mood changed, and now he must sing a song of the lowest boîtes in Paris. As he sang he skipped like a performing dog, grimacing, beating time with his hands, conducting the chorus that rose from the tables.

Brockett sighed as he shrugged his shoulders in disgust, and once again Stephen glanced at Mary; but Mary, she saw, had not understood that song with its inexcusable meaning. Valérie was talking to Jeanne Maurel, talking about her villa at St. Tropez; talking of the garden, the sea, the sky, the design she had drawn for a green marble fountain. Stephen could hear her charming voice, so cultured, so cool⁠—itself cool as a fountain; and she marvelled at this woman’s perfect poise, the genius she possessed for complete detachment; Valérie had closed her ears to that song, and not only her ears but her mind and spirit.

The place was becoming intolerably hot, the room too overcrowded for dancing. Lids drooped, mouths sagged, heads lay upon shoulders⁠—there was kissing, much kissing at a table in the corner. The air was fetid with drink and all the rest; unbreathable it appeared to Stephen. Dickie yawned an enormous, uncovered yawn; she was still young enough to feel rather sleepy. But Wanda was being seduced by her eyes, the lust of the eye was heavy upon her, so that Pat must shake a lugubrious head and begin to murmur anent General Custer.

Brockett got up and paid the bill; he was sulky, it seemed, because Stephen had snubbed him. He had not spoken for quite half an hour, and refused point-blank to accompany them further. “I’m going home to my bed, thanks⁠—good morning,” he said crossly, as they crowded into the motor.

They drove to a couple more bars, but at these they remained for only a very few minutes. Dickie said they were dull and Jeanne Maurel agreed⁠—she suggested that they should go on to Alec’s.

Valérie lifted an eyebrow and groaned. She was terribly bored, she was terribly hungry. “I do wish I could get some cold chicken,” she murmured.

IV

As long as she lived Stephen never forgot her first impressions of the bar known as Alec’s⁠—that meeting-place of the most miserable of all those who comprised the miserable army. That merciless, drug-dealing, death-dealing haunt to which flocked the battered remnants of men whom their fellow men had at last stamped under; who, despised of the world, must despise themselves beyond all hope, it seemed, of salvation. There they sat, closely herded together at the tables, creatures shabby yet tawdry, timid yet defiant⁠—and their eyes, Stephen never forgot their eyes, those haunted, tormented eyes of the invert.

Of all ages, all degrees of despondency, all grades of mental and physical ill-being, they must yet laugh shrilly from time to time, must yet tap their feet to the rhythm of music, must yet dance together in response to the band⁠—and that dance seemed the Dance of Death to Stephen. On more than one hand was a large, ornate ring, on more than one wrist a conspicuous bracelet; they wore jewelry that might only be worn by these men when they were thus gathered together. At Alec’s they could dare to give way to such tastes⁠—what was left of themselves they became at Alec’s.

Bereft of all social dignity, of all social charts contrived for man’s guidance, of the fellowship that by right divine should belong to each breathing, living creature; abhorred, spat upon, from their earliest days the prey to a ceaseless persecution, they were now even lower than their enemies knew, and more hopeless than the veriest dregs of creation. For since all that to many of them had seemed fine, a fine, selfless and at times even noble emotion, had been covered with shame, called unholy and vile, so gradually they themselves had sunk down to the level upon which the world placed their emotions. And looking with abhorrence upon these men, drink-sodden, doped as were only too many, Stephen yet felt that some terrifying thing stalked abroad in that unhappy room at Alec’s; terrifying because if there were a God His anger must rise at such vast injustice. More pitiful even than her lot was theirs, and because of them mighty should be the world’s reckoning.

Alec the tempter, the vendor of dreams, the dispenser of illusions whiter than snow; Alec, who sold little packets of cocaine for large bundles of notes, was now opening wine, with a smile and a flourish, at the next-door table.

He set down the bottle: “Et voilà, mes filles!”

Stephen looked at the men; they seemed quite complacent.

Against the wall sat a bald, flabby man whose fingers crept over an amber chaplet. His lips moved; God alone knew to whom he prayed, and God alone knew what prayers he was praying⁠—horrible he was, sitting there all alone with that infamous chaplet between his fingers.

The band struck up a onestep. Dickie still danced, but with Pat, for Wanda was now beyond dancing. But Stephen would not dance, not among these men, and she laid a restraining hand upon Mary. Despite her sense of their terrible affliction, she could not dance in this place with Mary.

A youth passed with a friend and the couple were blocked by the press of dancers in front of her table. He bent forward, this youth, until his face was almost on a level with Stephen’s⁠—a grey, drug-marred face with a mouth that trembled incessantly.

“Ma sœur,” he whispered.

For a moment she wanted to strike that face with her naked fist, to obliterate it. Then all of a sudden she perceived the eyes, and the memory came of a hapless creature, distracted, bleeding from bursting lungs, hopelessly pursued, glancing this way, then that, as though looking for something, some refuge, some hope⁠—and the thought: “It’s looking for God who made it.”

Stephen shivered and stared at her tightly clenched hands; the nails whitened her flesh. “Mon frère,” she muttered.

And now someone was making his way through the crowd, a quiet, tawny man with the eyes of the Hebrew; Adolphe Blanc, the gentle and learned Jew, sat down in Dickie’s seat beside Stephen. And he patted her knee as though she were young, very young and in great need of consolation.

“I have seen you for quite a long time, Miss Gordon. I’ve been sitting just over there by the window.” Then he greeted the others, but the greeting over he appeared to forget their very existence; he had come, it seemed, only to talk to Stephen.

He said: “This place⁠—these poor men, they have shocked you. I’ve been watching you in between the dances. They are terrible, Miss Gordon, because they are those who have fallen but have not risen again⁠—there is surely no sin so great for them, so unpardonable as the sin of despair; yet as surely you and I can forgive.⁠ ⁠…”

She was silent, not knowing what she should answer.

But he went on, in no way deterred by her silence. He spoke softly, as though for her ears alone, and yet as a man might speak when consumed by the flame of some urgent and desperate mission. “I am glad that you have come to this place, because those who have courage have also a duty.”

She nodded without comprehending his meaning.

“Yes, I am glad that you have come here,” he repeated. “In this little room, tonight, every night, there is so much misery, so much despair, that the walls seem almost too narrow to contain it⁠—many have grown callous, many have grown vile, but these things in themselves are despair, Miss Gordon. Yet outside there are happy people who sleep the sleep of the so-called just and righteous. When they wake it will be to persecute those who, through no known fault of their own, have been set apart from the day of their birth, deprived of all sympathy, all understanding. They are thoughtless, these happy people who sleep⁠—and who is there to make them think, Miss Gordon?”

“They can read,” she stammered, “there are many books.⁠ ⁠…”

But he shook his head. “Do you think they are students? Ah, but no, they will not read medical books; what do such people care for the doctors? And what doctor can know the entire truth? Many times they meet only the neurasthenics, those of us for whom life has proved too bitter. They are good, these doctors⁠—some of them very good; they work hard trying to solve our problem, but half the time they must work in the dark⁠—the whole truth is known only to the normal invert. The doctors cannot make the ignorant think, cannot hope to bring home the sufferings of millions; only one of ourselves can some day do that.⁠ ⁠… It will need great courage but it will be done, because all things must work toward ultimate good; there is no real wastage and no destruction.” He lit a cigarette and stared thoughtfully at her for a moment or two. Then he touched her hand. “Do you comprehend? There is no destruction.”

She said: “When one comes to a place like this, one feels horribly sad and humiliated. One feels that the odds are too heavily against any real success, any real achievement. Where so many have failed who can hope to succeed? Perhaps this is the end.”

Adolphe Blanc met her eyes. “You are wrong, very wrong⁠—this is only the beginning. Many die, many kill their bodies and souls, but they cannot kill the justice of God, even they cannot kill the eternal spirit. From their very degradation that spirit will rise up to demand of the world compassion and justice.”

Strange⁠—this man was actually speaking her thoughts, yet again she fell silent, unable to answer.

Dickie and Pat came back to the table, and Adolphe Blanc slipped quietly away; when Stephen glanced round his place was empty, nor could she perceive him crossing the room through the press and maze of those terrible dancers.

V

Dickie went sound asleep in the car with her head against Pat’s inhospitable shoulder. When they got to her hotel she wriggled and stretched. “Is it⁠ ⁠… is it time to get up?” she murmured.

Next came Valérie Seymour and Jeanne Maurel to be dropped at the flat on the Quai Voltaire; then Pat who lived a few streets away, and last but not least the drunken Wanda. Stephen had to lift her out of the car and then get her upstairs as best she could, assisted by Burton and followed by Mary. It took quite a long time, and arrived at the door, Stephen must hunt for a missing latchkey.

When they finally got home, Stephen sank into a chair. “Good Lord, what a night⁠—it was pretty awful.” She was filled with the deep depression and disgust that are apt to result from such excursions.

But Mary pretended to a callousness that in truth she was very far from feeling, for life had not yet dulled her finer instincts; so far it had only aroused her anger. She yawned. “Well, at least we could dance together without being thought freaks; there was something in that. Beggars can’t be choosers in this world, Stephen!”