Chapter 2 - Page 2

restaurant where they sometimes dined
together in London--three quarters of an hour late, and he at his
table, haggard with anxiety, irritation, hunger. Oh, she was
damnable!

It occurred to him that perhaps his hostess might be in her
boudoir. It was a possibility; he would go and see. Mrs.
Wimbush's boudoir was in the central tower on the garden front.
A little staircase cork-screwed up to it from the hall. Denis
mounted, tapped at the door. "Come in." Ah, she was there; he
had rather hoped she wouldn't be. He opened the door.

Priscilla Wimbush was lying on the sofa. A blotting-pad rested
on her knees and she was thoughtfully sucking the end of a silver
pencil.

"Hullo," she said, looking up. "I'd forgotten you were coming."

"Well, here I am, I'm afraid," said Denis deprecatingly. "I'm
awfully sorry."

Mrs. Wimbush laughed. Her voice, her laughter, were deep and
masculine. Everything about her was manly. She had a large,
square, middle-aged face, with a massive projecting nose and
little greenish eyes, the whole surmounted by a lofty and
elaborate coiffure of a curiously improbable shade of orange.
Looking at her, Denis always thought of Wilkie Bard as the
cantatrice.

"That's why I'm going to
Sing in op'ra, sing in op'ra,
Sing in op-pop-pop-pop-pop-popera."

Today she was wearing a purple silk dress with a high collar and
a row of pearls. The costume, so richly dowagerish, so
suggestive of the Royal Family, made her look more than ever like
something on the Halls.

"What have you been doing all this time?" she asked.

"Well," said Denis, and he hesitated, almost voluptuously. He
had a tremendously amusing account of London and its doings all
ripe and ready in his mind. It would be a pleasure to give it
utterance. "To begin with," he said...

But he was too late. Mrs. Wimbush's question had been what the
grammarians call rhetorical; it asked for no answer. It was a
little conversational flourish, a gambit in the polite game.

"You find me busy at my horoscopes," she said, without even being
aware that she had interrupted him.

A little pained, Denis decided to reserve his story for more
receptive ears. He contented himself, by way of revenge, with
saying "Oh?" rather icily.

"Did I tell you how I won four hundred on the Grand National this
year?"

"Yes," he replied, still frigid and mono-syllabic. She must have
told him at least six times.

"Wonderful, isn't it? Everything is in the Stars. In the Old
Days, before I had the Stars to help me, I used to lose
thousands. Now"--she paused an instant--"well, look at that four
hundred on the Grand National. That's the Stars."

Denis