"I do really think it's awful, all this! It's so expensive, everything; and it's all for pleasure. The whole town's for pleasure." In the background she had a vision of her working life, with its discipline and cast-iron hours and wristlets and fatigue and privations and penury. The click of the typewriter, the green-shaded lamps, the Tube, the cold bedroom, the washing and sewing done in the cold bedroom! The blue working frock with its pathetic red line of clumsy embroidery!
"What about Margate?" Felix demanded quietly.
She was nonplussed.
"Oh! But that's different!"
"It is. It's not half as good. You must remember there's nothing new in all this. It's been going on in the Mediterranean for thousands of years, and it's likely to go on for thousands of years more. It's what human nature is. What are you going to do about it? Would you abolish luxury and pleasure? Not you. Do you imagine that God created the shores of the Mediterranean and this climate for anything else but this? What frightens you is the tremendous organization and concentration of the affair. Nothing else. And let me tell you that this town is the most interesting town on the coast just now. The fellow that's got the new concession for the casino is a bit of a genius. He's moulding the place into something fresh. It used to be the primmest place on earth. He discovered that the English don't want to be prim any more; he showed them to themselves. Do you suppose all these women began to come here on their own? They're pawns in his great game. He brought them; but no nice-minded person asks how, nor whether they really pay for their meals or their rooms, nor how they manage to encourage big gambling in the baccarat rooms. This fellow has put the wind up to the next town up the coast: it used to be the most corrupt town in the whole of Europe, that place used to be! And now the rival genius there is introducing large families of children and nurses there in the hope of persuading the English that they prefer to be prim and domestic after all. The fact is these two geniuses are gambling against one another for far bigger stakes than any of the baccarat maniacs. It's a battle for the command of the coast. That's what it is. You don't get the hang of it all at once; but you will in time. Let's dance."
Lilian was startled by the invitation, for they had not yet danced together. She remembered how, on that night when he first talked to her about herself, he had known that she was being deprived of an evening's dancing. They stood up as the chicken was being removed. She smiled at him with fresh admiration. He had impregnated her with new ideas; he had reassured her; he had justified her enjoyment; he was amazing; he was mad about her, in his restrained style; and now he would surprisingly dance with her.
Although they took the floor early in the dance, when only two other couples had begun to dance, it was impossible for her to be nervous within his arm. Half the room gazed at her, for she had attracted attention from the first. She knew that half the room was gazing at her, and she liked it. She guessed that half the room was saying: "Look at that fresh young creature who's with that middle-aged man--she must be really very young." And she liked it. She liked to show herself with the man who was more than old enough to be her father, worn by knowledge and experience and the corrupting of the world; to contrast her untried simplicity--the bloom of the virginal scarcely gone from it--with his grey hairs and his wrinkled, disillusioned, passive eyes. She was happy in the thought that everybody knew that she must have given herself to him, and that there was something strange, sinister, and even odious in her abandonment. He had used the word "perverse." She did not wholly understand the word, but it appealed to her, and for her it expressed her mood.
She had noticed, in the room, how the women no longer unquestionably young were more consciously and carefully charming towards their men, receiving adulation but rendering it back; whereas the unquestionably young were more negligent and far more egotistic. And so she behaved like one no longer unquestionably young. She glanced up at her partner with ravishing, ecstatic smiles; she publicly adored him. And she was glad that her green and gold frock with its long arm-holes was not of the Wigmore Street cut, but quite other in origin and spirit and in its effect upon the imagination.
The dancing had by this time become general, but the olive-tinted temptresses were still prominent in the throng, and sometimes she touched them in the curves of the dance. She knew where they beat her and where she beat them. And it was vouchsafed to her from the eyes of Felix that she was lovely and marvellous. She felt intensely, inexpressibly happy, and more than happy--triumphant. Her quiet, obstinate resentment against the domestic policy of her father died out, and she forgave him as she danced. She thought with a secret sigh almost painful in its relief:
"Thank God I have fulfilled myself and succeeded not too late!"