and of ignoring her husband--by her assumption of sexlessness and
the fact that she was unmoved by his compliments and looked at him
with eyes in which there was no remote suggestion of physical
interest.

And it was this attitude, new to him hitherto on his easy way, that
began to challenge him, to stir in him a desire to bring her down to
his own level, to make her fall in love and become what he called
human. He had given her several evenings, and had put himself out to
cater to her eager demand to see life and burn the night away in
crowds and noise. He had treated her, this young, new thing, as he
was in the habit of treating any beautiful woman with whom he was on
the verge of an affair and who realized the art of give and take.
But more than ever she conveyed the impression of sex detachment to
which he was wholly unaccustomed. He might have been any
inarticulate lad of her own age, useful as a companion, to be
ordered to fetch and carry, dance or walk, go or come. At that
moment there was no woman in the city for whom he would undergo the
boredom and the bruising and the dementia of such a place as the one
to which she had drawn him. He was not a provincial who imagined
that it was the smart thing to attend this dull orgy and struggle on
a polished floor packed as in a sardine tin. Years ago he had
outgrown cabaret mania and recovered from the fascination of
syncopation. And yet here he was, once more, against all his
fastidiousness, playing the out-of-town lad to a girl who took
everything and gave nothing in return. It was absurd, fantastic. He
was Gilbert Palgrave, the man who picked and chose, for whose
attentions many women would give their ears, who stood in satirical
aloofness from the general ruck; and as he held Joan in his arms and
made sporadic efforts to dance whenever there was a few inches of