haven't a 'heart.' From the standpoint of nature and society you're
as depraved as possible. You are worse than any one else here--than
all of them rolled together."

Curiously, she thought, this didn't disturb her, which proved at
once that he was right. Linda regarded herself with interest as a
supremely reprehensible person, perhaps a vampire. The latter,
though, was a rather stout woman who, dressed in frightful lingerie,
occupied couches with her arms caught about the neck of a man
bending over her. Every detail of this was distasteful.

What was she?

Her attention wandered to the squat Chinese god in the glass case.
It was clear that he hadn't stirred for ages. A difficult thought
partly formed in her mind--the Chinese was the god of this room, of
Markue's party, of the women seated in the dim light on the floor
and the divans; the low gurgle of their laughter, the dusky
whiteness of their shoulders in the upcoiling incense, the smothered
gleams of their hair, with the whispering men, were the world of the
grayish-green image.

She explained this haltingly to Pleydon, who listened with a
flattering interest. "I expect you're laughing at me inside," she
ended impotently. "And the other, the Greek Victory," he added, "is
the goddess of the other world, of the spirit. It's quaint a heathen
woman should be that."

Linda discovered that she liked Pleydon enormously. She continued
daringly that he might be the sort of man she wanted to marry. But