Kit burst out laughing.
"Jack, you are inimitable as the jealous husband," she had said. "It is a new rôle. Poor Ted! it must have cost a pot of money."
And Jack had permitted himself to leave the room, banging the door behind him.
Ted and she had laughed over the episode together.
"So like a man to ask absurd questions, and then be angry because he is told the truth," Kit had said. "It would have been quite as easy for me to lie."
But to-night not even the mirror, with its amusing associations, nor the reflection of herself, nor the Russian cigarette, could beguile the tedium of the toilet. The comb caught in her hair; her maid's hands were cold, she was clumsy; the evening post was stupid; it was late; Kit was sleepy and discontented. In fact, she was in an abominable temper.
At last it was over, and her maid left her. She got up from the chair in front of her glass, where she had been sitting in her wonderful lace dressing-gown, and took a turn up and down the room. She felt like a fractious child, out of sorts, out of gear, out of temper. Then quite suddenly she stopped, threw herself face downwards on the bed, and began to cry from sheer rebellion and impatience of this stupid world.