She went on in a different tone:

"You were the first to see Connie?"

"Yes," he said sadly.

"She has lain in my arms all afternoon," Lady [91] Queenie burst out, her voice liquid. "And now I'm going straight back to her." She looked at him with the strangest triumphant expression. Then her large, equivocal blue eyes fell from his face to the flowers, and their expression simultaneously altered to disdainful amusement full of mischievous implications. She ran off without another word. The glazed entrance doors revolved, and he saw her nip into an electric brougham, which, before he had time to button his overcoat, vanished like an apparition in the rainy mist.

[92]


Chapter 15

EVENING OUT

He found Christine exactly as he had left her, in the same tea-gown and the same posture, and on the same sofa. But a small table had been put by the sofa; and on this table was a penny bottle of ink in a saucer, and a pen. She was studying some kind of official form. The pucker between the eyes was very marked.