but what a pity she has got six weeks, isn't it? Still, I was vehy much
struck by what someone said to me to-day--that you'd be vehy sorry if women
_did_ get the vote. I think I should be sorry, too--you know what I mean."

"Perfectly," ejaculated Rosamund, with a pleasant smile.

"I hope I'm not skidding," said Miss Ingate still more timidly, but also
with a sardonic giggle, looking round into the gloom. "I do skid sometimes,
you know, and we've just come away from a----"

She could not finish.

"And Mrs. Moncreiff, if I've got the name right, is she with us, too?"
asked Rosamund, miraculously urbane. And added: "I hear she has wealth and
is the mistress of it."

Audrey jumped up, smiling, and lifting her veil. She could not help
smiling. The studio, the lamp, Rosamund with her miraculous
self-complacency, Nick with her soft, mad eyes and wistful voice, the
blundering ruthless Miss Ingate, all seemed intensely absurd to her.
Everything seemed absurd except dancing and revelry and coloured lights and
strange disguises and sensuous contacts. She had the most careless
contempt, stiffened by a slight loathing, for political movements and every
melancholy effort to reform the world. The world did not need reforming and
did not want to be reformed.

"Perhaps you don't know my story," Audrey began, not realising how she
would continue. "I am a widow. I made an unhappy marriage. My husband on
the day after our wedding-day began to eat peas with his knife. In a week I
was forced to leave him. And a fortnight later I heard that he was dead of