For some weeks after the incident of the opal, there was no development
of the problem of behavior. Maurice did not refer to the subject, and
Jenny was very glad to put it out of her mind. As if by tacit agreement,
they both took refuge from any solution in a gayety that might have been
assumed, so sedulously was it cultivated. Everything else was set aside
for a good time, and though there were interludes when in the seclusion
of an afternoon spent together they would recapture the spirit of that
golden and benign October, these lovers generally seemed anxious to
share with their friends the responsibilities of enjoyment.
Thus it came about that a polity of pleasure was established whose
citizens were linked together by ties of laughter. This city state of
Bohemia, fortified against intrusion by experiences which the casual
visitor was not privileged to share, stood for Jenny as the solidest
influence upon her life so far. It gave her a background for Maurice,
which made him somehow more real. Without this little society,
acknowledging herself and him as supreme and accepting their love as the
pivot on which its own existence revolved, she would have seen her lover
as an actuality only when they were making love. Out of her sight, he
would have faded into the uncertain mists of another social grade,
floated incorporeal among photographs of Ellis and Walery in a legend of
wealth and dignity beyond her conception. To Fuz and Ronnie and
Cunningham she could talk of Maurice, thereby gleaning external
impressions which confirmed her own attitude. In this atmosphere her
love assumed a sanity and normality that might otherwise easily have
been lost.
It must not be supposed that this little republic was content with the
territory of 422 Grosvenor Road. On the contrary, throughout October,
November and December, there were frequent sallies against convention
and raids upon Philistia. There were noisy tea-parties in hostile
strongholds like the Corner House, where ladies were not permitted to
smoke and customers were kindly requested to pay at the desk. Perhaps
their most successful foray was upon a fashionable tea-shop in St.
James's Street, where a florin was the minimum charge for tea to include
everything; on this occasion, prepared for by rigorous fasting, it
included a very great deal. There were attempts by Ronnie Walker to make
the girls enjoy picture-galleries, by Cunningham to convert them to
Symphony Concerts. And once they all went to see a play by Mr. Bernard
Shaw. But painting, music and the drama could not compete with skating
rinks, where elegant and accomplished instructors complained of their
rowdiness. But, as Jenny said, "What of it? _We're_ enjoying ourselves,
any old way."
The pinnacle of their gay ambition was a Covent Garden Ball. This
entertainment had continually to be postponed for lack of funds; for,
though a Covent Garden Ball has usually a sober, even a chilling effect
upon the company, it has dare-devil pretensions which Maurice and his
retinue would not exploit unless they were assured of a conspicuous
success.
So the Second Empire Masquerade was planned and debated a long time
before it actually happened. That it happened at all was due to the
death of Maurice's great-aunt, who left him one hundred pounds. This
legacy being unexpected, was obviously bound to be spent at once. As the
legatee pointed out to Jenny one dripping afternoon in early January, as
they sat together in the studio:
"It's practically like finding money in the road. I know that one day my
stockbroker uncle will leave me two thousand pounds. He's told me so
often to raise my spirits on wet week-ends at his house. I've planned
what to do with that. Every farthing is booked. But this hundred I
never thought of. I was beginning to despair of ever raising the cash
for Covent Garden, and here it is all of a sudden."
"You're not going to spend a hundred pounds in one evening?" Jenny
exclaimed.
"Not all of it, because you've got to buy yourself some furs and three
hats and those silk stockings with peach-colored clocks--oh, yes, and
I've got to buy you that necklace of fire opals which we saw in Wardour
Street and also that marquise ring, and I've got to buy myself a safety
razor and a box of pastels, and I simply must get Thackeray's _Lectures
on the English Humorists_ for Fuz."
"There won't be much left of your hundred pounds," said Jenny.
"Well, let's draw up an estimate. I'll write down the possibles and then
we'll delete nearly all of them."
Maurice got up from his chair and wandered round the room in search of
note-paper. Not being able to find any, he pinned a large sheet of
drawing-paper to a board and produced a pencil.
"Look at him," laughed Jenny. "Look at the Great Millionaire. Just
because he's come into money, he can't write on anything smaller than a
blanket."
"It's not ostentation," Maurice declared. "It's laziness--a privilege of
the very poor, as you ought to know by this time. I can't find any
note-paper."
"I should think you couldn't. I wonder you can find yourself in this
room."
"Come along," urged the owner of it. "We must begin. Maurice and Jenny.
Then Fuz and Maudie, Ronnie and Irene, Cunningham and Madge. Any more
you can think of?"
"You don't mean to say you've taken that unnatural piece of paper just
to write those few names which we could have thought of in our heads.
What would you do with him?"
"We want another eight," Maurice declared.
"Oh, no, eight's plenty."
"Perhaps it is," he agreed. "Well, now, Maurice will be Theophile
Gautier--no, he won't--the red waistcoat knocks him out--Edmond de
Goncourt? No, he had a mustache. Chopin? Long hair. Look here, I don't
think we'll be anybody in particular. We'll just be ladies and gentlemen
of the period. You know you girls have got to wear crinolines and fichus
and corkscrew curls."
"Like we used to wear in Boheme in the Opera?"
"That's it. You must see about your dresses at once. Good ones will cost
about ten pounds to hire, and that ought to include some decent paste."
"We sha'n't have to pay for _our_ tickets."
"Good. Four guineas saved. Dresses? Say twenty pounds for the eight of
us. Supper with fizz another ten quid. Four salmon-colored taxis with
tips, ten pounds."
"How much?" Jenny exclaimed. "Ten pounds just to take us to Covent
Garden Ball and back?"
"Ah, but I've a plan. These salmon-colored taxis are going to be the
_chef d'oeuvre_ as well as the _hors d'oeuvre_ of the entertainment.
Hush, it's a secret. Let me see, our tickets--four guineas--forty-four
pounds four shillings. Well, say fifty quid to include all tips and
breakfast."
"Well, I think it's too much," Jenny declared.
"Not too much for an evening that shall be famous over all evenings--an
evening that you, my Jenny, will remember when you're an ancient old
woman--an evening that we'll talk over for the rest of our lives."
While Maurice was speaking, the shadow of a gigantic doubt passed over
Jenny's mind. She endured one of those moments when only the profound
uselessness of everything has any power to impress the reason. She
suffered a complete loss of faith and hope. The moment was one of those
black abysses before which the mind is aghast at effort and conceives
annihilation. In the Middle Ages such an experience would have been
ascribed to the direct and personal influence of Satan.
"What's the matter?" Maurice asked. "You look as if you didn't believe
me."
But, while the question was still on his lips, the shadow passed, and
Jenny laughed.
The famous evening was finally assigned to the twenty-seventh of
January. The four girls took their places in the ballet as usual and,
meeting from time to time in evolutions, would murmur as they danced by,
"To-night, what, what?" or "Don't you wish it was eleven?" They would
look at each other, too, from opposite sides of the stage, smiling in
the sympathy of anticipated pleasure. When the curtains fell they
hurried to their dressing-rooms to exchange tights and spangles for
mid-Victorian frocks, whose dainty lace made all the other girls very
envious indeed. Some were so envious as to suggest to Jenny that another
color would have suited her better than pink or that her hair would be
more becoming _en chignon_ than curled. But Jenny was not deceived by
such professions of amiable advice.
"Yes, some of you would like to see me with my hair done different. Some
of you wouldn't be half pleased if I went out looking a sight. Oh, no,
it's only a rumor. Thanks, I'm not taking any. I know what suits me
better than _any_one, _which_ pink does."
"Don't take any notice of them," Maudie whispered to her friend.
"Take notice of them. What! Why, I should be all the time looking. My
eyes would get as big as moons. They've been opened wide enough since I
came to the Orient, as it is."
At last, having survived every criticism, the four girls were ready. The
hall-porter's boy carried their luggage out to the salmon-colored taxis,
whose drivers looked embarrassed by the salmon-colored carnations which
Maurice insisted they should wear. The latter, with Fuz, Ronnie and
Cunningham, stood in the entrance of the court, wrapped in full cloaks
and wearing tall hats of a bygone fashion. They were leaning gracefully
on their tasseled canes as the girls came along the court towards them.
It was romantic to think that other girls in similar frocks had trod the
same path and met men dressed like them fifty years ago. This sweet
fancy was very vividly brought home to them when an old cleaner, grimed
with half a century of Orient dust, passed by the laughing, chattering
group, and, as she shuffled off towards Seven Dials, looked back over
her shoulder with an expression of fear.
"Marie thinks we're ghosts," laughed Madge.
"Isn't it dreadful to think she was once in the ballet?" said Jenny.
"Poor old crow, I do think it's dreadful."
The eight of them shivered at the thought.
"Really?" said Maurice. "How horrible."
The episode was a gaunt intrusion upon gayety; but it was soon forgotten
in the noise and sheen of Piccadilly.
The taxis with much hooting hummed through the dazzling thoroughfares
into the gloom and comparative stillness of Long Acre. As usual they
tried to cut through Floral Street, only to be turned back by a
policeman; but without much delay they swept at last under the great
portico of the Opera House. Here many girls, blown into Covent Garden by
the raw January winds, gave the effect of thistledown, so filmy were
their dresses; and the rigid young men, stopping behind to pay their
fares, looked stiff and awkward as groups of Pre-Raphaelite courtiers.
Commissionaires decorated the steps without utility. In the vestibule
merry people were greeting each other and nodding as they passed up and
down the wide staircase. Here and there an isolated individual,
buttoning and unbuttoning his gloves with unconscionable industry, gazed
anxiously at every swing of the door. Presently Jenny and Madge and
Maudie and Irene were ready and, as on the arms of their escort they
took the floor of the ballroom, might have stepped from a notebook of
Gavarni.
Covent Garden balls are distinguished by the atmosphere of a spectacle
which pervades them. The floor itself has the character of an arena
encircled by tiers of red boxes, many of which display marionettes, an
unobtrusive audience, given over to fans and the tinkle of distant
laughter; while the curtained glooms of others are haunted by invisible
eyes. Here are no chaperons struggling with palms and hair-nets through
a wearisome evening, creaking in wicker chairs and discussing draughts
with neighbors. The old men, searching for bridge-players, are absent.
There is neither host nor hostess; and not one anaemic young debutante is
distressed by the bleakness of her unembarrassed programme.
Maurice announced that he had taken a box for the evening, so that his
guests would be able, when tired of dancing, to cheat fatigue. Then he
caught Jenny round the waist, and, regardless of their companions, the
two of them were lost in the tide of dancers. They were only vaguely
conscious of the swirl of petticoats and lisp of feet around their
course. In the irresistible sweep of melodious violins all that really
existed for Maurice and Jenny was nearness to each other, and eyes
ablaze with rapture; and for him there was the silken coolness of her
curls, for her the fever of his hand upon her waist.
During the interval between the sixth and seventh waltzes, Maurice,
breathless at the memory of their perfect accord, said:
"I wonder if Paolo and Francesca enjoy swooning together on the winds of
hell. Great Scott! as if one wouldn't prefer the seventh circle to
bathing in pools of light with a blessed damosel. I'm surprised at
Rosetti."
"Who's she?"
"The blessed damosel?"
"No--Rose Etty."
"Oh, Jenny, don't make me laugh."
"Well, I don't know what you're talking about."
"I was speculating. Hark! They're playing the Eton Boating Song. Come
along. We mustn't miss a bar of it."
In the scent of frangipani and jicky and phulnana the familiar tune
became queerly exotic. The melody, charged with regret for summer elms
and the sounds of playing-fields, full of the vanished laughter of
boyhood, held now the heart of romantic passion. It spoke of regret for
the present rather than the past and, as it reveled in the lapse of
moments, gave expression to the dazzling swiftness of such a night in a
complaint for flying glances, sighs and happy words lost in their very
utterance.
"Heart of hearts," whispered Maurice in the swirl of the dance.
"Oh, Maurice, I do love you," she sighed.
Now the moments fled faster as the beat quickened for the climax of the
dance. Maurice held Jenny closer than before, sweeping her on through a
mist of blurred lights in which her eyes stood out clear as jewels from
the pallor of her face. Round the room they went, round and round,
faster and faster. Jenny was now dead white. Her lips were parted
slightly, her fingers strained at Maurice's sleeve. He, with flushed
cheeks, wore elation all about him. No dream could have held the
multitude of imaginations that thronged their minds; and when it seemed
that life must end in the sharpness of an ecstasy that could never be
recorded in mortality, the music stopped. There was a sound of many
footsteps leaving the ballroom. Jenny leaned on Maurice's arm.
"You're tired," he said. "Jolly good dance that?"
"Wasn't it glorious? Oh, Maurice, it was lovely."
"Come and sit in the box when you've had some champagne, and I'll dance
with the girls while you're resting. Shall I?"
She nodded.
Presently Maurice was tearing round the room with Maudie, both of them
laughing very loudly, while Jenny sat back in a faded arm-chair thinking
of the old Covent Garden days and nights, and wondering how she could
ever have fancied she was happy before she met Maurice. In a few minutes
Fuz came into the box to ask if she wanted to dance.
"No, I'm tired," she told him.
"It's just as well, perhaps," he said gravely. "For I am what you would
describe as a very unnatural dancer."
"Oh, Fuz," she laughed; "are you? Oh, you must dance once round the
room with me before it's over. Oh, you must. It tickles my fancy, the
idea of Fuz dancing."
"At last I've earned a genuine laugh."
"Oh, Fuz, doesn't anyone else ever laugh at you, only me?"
"Very rarely."
"Shame!"
"So it is."
"Aren't Maurice and Maudie making a terrible noise?"
"They're certainly laughing loud enough," Fuz agreed. "But Maurice is
always in spirits. I don't think he knows the meaning of depression."
"Doesn't he then!" Jenny exclaimed. "I think he gets _very_ depressed
sometimes!"
"Not deeply. It's never more than a passing mood."
"That's quite right. It is a mood. But he works himself up into a state
over his moods."
"Tell me, dear Jane," said Castleton suddenly. "No, on second thoughts,
I won't ask."
"Oh, do tell me."
"No, it's not my business. Besides, you'd be annoyed, and I've no wish
to make our Jenny angry."
"I won't be angry. Do tell me, Fuz, what you was going to ask."
"Well, I will," he said, after a pause. "Jenny, are you very fond of
Maurice?"
"Oh, I love him."
"Really love him?"
"Of course."
"But you'd soon get over it if----"
"If what?"
"If Maurice was--was a disappointment--for instance, if he married
somebody else quite suddenly? Don't look so frightened; he's not going
to, as far as I know; or likely to, but if ... would it upset your
life?"
Jenny burst into tears.
"My dearest Jane," Castleton cried, "I was only chaffing. Please don't
cry. Jenny, Jenny, I'm only an inquisitive, speculative jackanapes.
Maurice isn't going to do anything of the kind. Really. Besides, I
thought--oh, Jane--I'm terribly ashamed of myself."
"Maurice said I shouldn't like you," Jenny sobbed. "And I don't. I hate
you. Don't stay with me. Go out of the box. I'm going home. Where's
Maurice? I want Maurice to come to me."
"He's dancing," said Castleton helplessly. "Jane, I'm an absolute beast.
Jane, will you marry me and show your forgiving nature?"
"Don't go on teasing me," sobbed Jenny, louder than ever. "You're
hateful. I hate you."
"No, but I mean it. Will you, Jenny? Really, I'm not joking. I'd marry
you to-morrow."
Jenny's tears gradually turned to laughter, and at last she had to say:
"Oh, Fuz, you're hateful, but you are funny."
"It's a most extraordinary thing," he replied, "that the only person I
don't want to laugh at me must do it. Jane!" He held out his hand.
"Jane, are we pals again?"
"I suppose we've got to be," Jenny pouted.
"Good pals and jolly companions?"
"Oh, whoever was it said that to me once?" cried Jenny. "Years and years
ago. Oh, whoever was it?"
"Years and years?" echoed Castleton, quizzing. "Who are you, ancient
woman?"
"_Don't_ be silly. It was. Someone said it when I was a little girl. Oh,
Fuz, I'd go raving mad to remember who it was."
"Well, anyway, I've said it now. And is it a bargain?"
"What?"
"You and I being pals?"
"Of course."
"Which means that when I'm in trouble, I go to Jane for advice, and
when Jane's in trouble, she comes to Fuz. Shake hands on that."
Jenny, feeling very shy of him for the first time during their
acquaintanceship, let him take her hand.
"And the tears are a secret?" he asked.
"Not if Maurice asks me. I'd have to tell him."
"Would you? All right, if he asks, tell him."
Maurice, however, did not ask, being full of arrangements for supper and
in a quandary of taste between Pol Roger and Perrier Jouet.
"What about Perrier without Jouet?" Castleton suggested. "It would save
money."
Supper (and in the end Maurice chose Pommery) was very jolly; but
nothing for the lovers during the rest of the evening reached the height
of those first waltzes together. After supper Fuz and Jenny danced a
cake-walk, and Ronnie tried to hum a favorite tune to Cunningham in
order that he could explain to the conductor what Ronnie wanted. Nothing
came of it, however, as the latter never succeeded in disentangling it
from two other tunes. So, with laughter and dancing, they kept the night
merry to the last echo of music, and when at about half-past six they
all stood in the vestibule waiting for the salmon-colored taxis to drive
them home, all agreed that Maurice had done well.
"And I've not done yet," he said. "I suppose you all think you're going
home to tumble sleepily into bed. Oh, no, we're going to have breakfast
first at the old Sloop, Greenwich."
"Greenwich?" they repeated in chorus.
"I've ordered a thumping breakfast. The drive will do us good. We can
see the dawn break over the river."
"And put our watches right," added Castleton.
"Then you girls can be driven home (your bags are all inside the taxis)
and sleep all the rest of the morning and afternoon."
Maurice was so eager to carry this addendum that none of them had the
heart to vote firmly for bed.
"I don't mind where we go," said Ronnie. "But why Greenwich in
particular? We can see the dawn break over the river just as well at
Westminster."
"Greenwich is in the manner," Maurice answered.
"What manner?"
"The crinoline manner. The Sloop is absolutely typically mid-Victorian
and already twice as romantic as your crumbling Gothic or overworked
Georgian."
So the taxis hummed off to Greenwich through the murk of a wet and windy
January morning. Wagons were being unloaded in Covent Garden as they
started; and along the Strand workers were already hurrying through the
rain. It was still too dark to see the river as they spun over Waterloo
Bridge, but the air blew in through the open windows very freshly. In
the New Kent Road factory girls, shuffling to work, turned to shout
after the four taxis; and Madge Wilson leaned out to wave to her
mother's shop as they passed.
All the way Jenny slept in Maurice's arms, and he from time to time
would bend over and kiss very lightly the sculptured mouth. In Deptford
High Street the gray dawn was beginning to define the houses, and in a
rift of the heavy clouds stars were paling.
Jenny woke up with a start.
"Where am I? Where am I?" Then, aware of Maurice, she nestled closer.
"You've been asleep, dearest. We're almost at Greenwich. It's
practically morning now."
"I'm cold."
"Are you, my sweet? I thought this fur coat would keep you warm. It's
yours, you know. I bought it for you to-day--yesterday, I mean."
"It's lovely and warm," she said, "but I'm so sleepy."
"You are so perfect when you're lying asleep," he said; "I must make a
statue of you. I shall call it The Tired Dancer. I'll begin as soon as
possible and finish it this spring."
"I wish spring would come quick," she murmured. "I'm sick of winter."
"So am I," he agreed. "And we shall have the most exquisite adventures
in the spring. We'll go out often into the country. Long country walks
will do you good."
"Rather."
"Hullo!" cried Maurice. "Here we are at the Sloop. I hope breakfast is
ready."
There was, however, no sign of life in the hotel by the water's side. It
stared at them without any welcome.
"What an extraordinary thing," said Maurice. "I'll ring the bell. Great
Scott! I never posted the letter telling them about breakfast."
"What would you do with him?" said Madge.
"Never mind. It's absurd to keep us waiting like this. We can surely get
breakfast." He pealed the bell loudly as he spoke.
"Can't you get in, sir?" asked one of the drivers.
"And it's coming on to rain," said Jenny.
Maurice pealed the bell louder than ever; and finally a sad-eyed porter
in shirt-sleeves opened the door and surveyed the party over a broom.
"We want breakfast," said Maurice; "breakfast for eight."
"Breakfast always is at eight," the man informed them.
"Breakfast for eight people and as quickly as possible."
The man looked doubtful.
"Good heavens!" Maurice cried irritably. "Surely in any decent hotel you
can get breakfast for eight."
"What are you?" the man asked. "Theatricals?"
"No, no, no, we've been to a fancy dress ball--and we want breakfast."
In the end they were admitted, and, a chamber-maid having been
discovered on a remote landing, the girls were shown into a bedroom.
"I thought this hotel professed to cater for excursions of pleasure,"
said Maurice frigidly.
"We don't get many of 'em here in winter."
"I'm not surprised. Good Lord, isn't the fire lighted in the
coffee-room?"
"We don't use the coffee-room much--except for political meetings.
Greenwich has gone out from what it used to be."
The girls came in, pale and tired, and the party foregathered round the
coffee-room grate, from which a wisp of smoke ascended in steady
promise.
"Well, Maurice," said Castleton, "I think very little of this ravished
conservatory into which your historic sense has led us. How do you like
Greenwich, girls?"
The girls all sighed.
"They don't."
"Hullo, here's a waiter," said Cunningham, turning round. "Good morning,
waiter."
"Good morning, sir."
"Is breakfast going to be long?"
"It's on order sir. Eggs and bacon, I think you said."
"I should think somebody probably did. In fact, I'd almost bet on it,"
said Castleton. "What's the time, waiter?"
"I don't know, sir, but I'll find out for you."
"I always thought Greenwich was famous for its time."
"Whitebait, sir, more than anything."
Castleton sighed; and Maurice, who had gone downstairs to reassure the
household, came back trying to look as if waiting for breakfast on a
January morning after dancing all night was one of the jolliest
experiences attainable by humanity.
"Maurice," said Ronnie Walker, "we think your night was splendid. But we
think your morning is rotten."
"Oh, Maurice, why didn't you let us go to bed?" Jenny grumbled.
"You can't really blame the hotel people," Maurice began.
"We don't," interrupted Cunningham severely. "We blame you."
"I also blame myself," said Ronnie, "for giving way to your mad
schemes."
"You're right," Jenny put in. "I think we was all mad. What must they
have thought of us--a party of loonies, I should say."
"I meant it to be very charming," Maurice urged in apology.
"Oh, well, it'll all come out in the wash, but I wish they'd bring in
this unnatural breakfast."
The company sighed in unison, and, as if encouraged by such an utterance
of breath, the wisp of smoke broke into a thin blue flame.
"Come, that's better," said Maurice, unduly encouraged. "The fire's
burning up quite cheerfully."
This and the entrance of breakfast revived everybody, and when a genuine
blaze crackled in the grate they thought Greenwich was not so bad after
all; though Maurice could not persuade anybody to stand by the bleak
windows flecked with raindrops and watch the big ships going out on the
ebb.
"But what shall we do?" Jenny demanded. "I can't go home after the milk.
I shall get into a most shocking row."
"You can explain matters," Cunningham suggested.
"Yes, I should say. Who'd believe we should be so mad as to rush off to
Greenwich on a pouring morning for breakfast? No, I must say I slept
with Ireen."
"Well, why don't you come back and go to bed at my place?" Irene
suggested. "You can go home tea-time."
"All right. I will."
Maudie and Madge decided to copy the example of the other two, by going
back together to Mrs. Wilson's house near the Elephant and Castle.
"Only we ought to change our clothes first," Jenny said. "What of it
though? We've got cloaks."
"I shouldn't mind changing," said Castleton. "These claret-colored
overalls of mine will inevitably attract the public vision."
"Rot!" said Maurice. "We can all drive down to the Elephant--although,
by the way, we ought to stop at the Marquis of Granby and look at the
Museum."
"To the deuce with all museums," cried Ronnie. "I want my bed."
"You are an unsporting lot," Maurice protested. "Then we'll stop at the
'Elephant,' and the girls can go home in two taxis and we'll go back in
the others."
So it was arranged; and, having paid the bill and politely assented to
the waiter's suggestion that they should come over in the summer-time to
a whitebait dinner, they left behind them the Sloop Hotel, Greenwich.
On the way back to London, Maurice attempted to point out to Jenny the
foolishness of her present style of living.
"All this fuss about whether you go home before or after the milk. I
can't understand why you let yourself be a slave to a family. I really
can't."
"But I'm not," said Jenny indignantly. "Only that doesn't say I'm going
to live with you, if that's what you mean."
Somehow the wet and dreary morning gave a certain crudity of outline to
the situation, destroying romantic enchantments and accentuating the
plain and ugly facts.
"You'd be ever so much happier if you did."
"Oh, well, who cares?"
"I wish you wouldn't say that."
"Well, what an unnatural time to talk about where I'm going to live and
what I'm going to do."
"It's extraordinary," said Maurice, "how much you're influenced by the
unimportant little things of life. I'm as much in love with you now as I
was last night when we were waltzing. You're not."
"I don't love anything now except bed."
"Yet I'm just as tired as you are."
"Who cares?"
"Damn it. Don't go on saying that. I can't think where you got hold of
that infernal expression."
"You are in a nasty mood," said Jenny sullenly.
"So are you."
"Well, why did you drag me out all this way in the early morning?"
"I wanted you to enjoy yourself. I wanted to round off a glorious
evening."
"I think a jolly good sleep rounds off a glorious evening, or anything
else, best of all."
"I think you sleep too much," argued Maurice, who was so tired himself
that he felt bound to contest futilely every point of the discussion.
"Well, I don't. That's where you and me don't agree."
"You're always sleeping."
"Well, if I like it, it needn't trouble you."
"Nothing troubles me," Maurice answered with much austerity. "Only I
wish to goodness you'd behave reasonably. Look here, you're an artistic
person. You earn your living by dancing. You don't want to take up with
a lot of old women's notions of morality. If you reject an experience,
you'll suffer for it. Chance only offers you Life--I mean Life only
offers you Chance----" But it did not matter much what he meant, for by
now Jenny was fast asleep.