She said she had seen the Russian dancers once already, and that they
were richly worth to him a six-hours' train journey. The posters of
the Russian dancers were rather daring and seductive. The Russian
dancers themselves were the most desolating stage spectacle that G.J.
had ever witnessed. The troupe consisted of intensely English girls
of various ages, and girl-children. The costumes had obviously been
fabricated by the artistes. The artistes could neither dance, pose,
group, make an entrance, make an exit, nor even smile. The ballets,
obviously fabricated by the same persons as the costumes, had no plot,
no beginning and no end. Crude amateurishness was the characteristic
of these honest and hard-working professionals, who somehow contrived
to be neither men nor women--and assuredly not epicene--but who
travelled from country town to country town in a glamour of posters,
exciting the towns, in spite of a perfect lack of sex, because they
were the fabled Russian dancers. The Moot Hall was crammed with adults
and their cackling offspring, who heartily applauded the show, which
indeed was billed as a "return visit" due to "terrific success" on a
previous occasion. "Is it not too marvellous," Concepcion had said.
He had admitted that it was. But the boredom had been excruciating.
In the street they had bought an evening paper of which he had never
before heard the name, to learn news of the war. The war, however,
seemed very far off; it had grown unreal. "We'll talk to-morrow,"
Concepcion had said, and gone abruptly to bed! Still, he had slept
well in the soft climate, to the everlasting murmur of the weir.

Then the Sunday. She was indisposed, could not come down to breakfast,
but hoped to come down to lunch, could not come down to lunch, but
hoped to come down to tea, could not come down to tea--and so on to
nightfall. The Sunday had been like a thousand years to him. He had
learnt the town, and the suburbs of it; the grass-grown streets, the