It was a day of surprises for Bramham, and it should be excused in him that he sat for three minutes with his mouth open.
"You!... You!... why, I've never even heard of you!" he cried, mortified, astonished, and it must be confessed, slightly unbelieving.
"But perhaps you have heard of Eve Destiny? Here are a pile of letters and things from my managers and publishers. I want you to look over them, and advise me, will you, about money and things ... I'm most frightfully unpractical and extravagant.... I can see that I shall very soon be poor again unless someone advises me and puts me on the right road. And I don't want to be poor again, Charlie. Poverty hurts ... it is like the sun, it shows up all the dark corners—in one's nature. If I can only arrange my affairs so as to have about a hundred a year to live on, I shall be satisfied."
"A hundred a year!" Bramham had been skimming through her papers with his business eye, which fortunately for his feminine acquaintances was a very different organ to his pleasure eye. All his instincts were outraged at this careless view of what was evidently a splendid working concern.
"A hundred a year! Why, if you go on like this you'll be more likely to haul in ten thousand a year."
"Ah! but I'm not going on," she interpolated calmly. "I don't mean to work any more."
"Not work any more? Why? Are you panned?... dried up ... fizzled out?"
"Not at all," she laughed. "I have as much fizzle as ever ... I don't want to work any more—that's all. I'm tired ... and there is nothing to work for."
"But since when did you begin to feel like that?"
"Oh, since a long time ... I haven't worked for ages ... I've been buying frocks in Paris, and sitting in the sunshine at Cannes, and looking over the side of a yacht at the blue Mediterranean, and just spending, spending ... but there is not much in that, Charlie ... there's not much in anything if your world is empty." Her voice broke off strangely, but when he looked at her the tragic smile was back on her mouth again. He knew now why she did it—it was to keep herself from wailing like a banshee! An interval here occurred, monopolised entirely by the waiter—a coolie, slim, snowily-draped, and regretful as are all coolie-waiters.