A great chasm seemed to have opened in the world, and she found herself clinging to the edge of it. It had opened at her very feet, and she was clutching the precipitous margin of it. Far away across the abyss were the memories of past years, and if she turned her head to look at them there was no clearness about them. They were unreal and unsubstantial, covered with wreaths of mist. Barren and bleak was the edge she was clinging to, hideous was the desolated prospect that lay beyond it. But the edge seemed firm enough; it bore her weight....
CHAPTER XI
HELEN GROTE was seated between Robin and Jim Lethbridge in the first row of stalls at a revue at the Monarchy. She had given up the attempt to find coherence in the plot of it, and, indeed, Robin had told her that she was on the wrong tack altogether, because revues did not have plots.
“Get in the proper mood, mother,” he said. “Don’t expect anything at all, and enjoy what you get. Oh, what a ripping scene! And there’s Diana Coombe in khaki. Hi! Jim! Don’t you wish there were some Tommies like that in the regiment?”
Jim gave a great shout of laughter by way of reply, for Arthur Angus, owner of the yacht with a crew of treble-voiced seamen, fell flat down as he stepped ashore, and without getting up began to sing.
“Oh, ripping!” said Jim. “Robin, there’s the dance coming now.”
Lady Grote was rather disappointed.
“Oh, have you been to it before?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me, and I would have got tickets for something else.”
Jim laughed.
“I’ve been eight times,” he said; “this makes the ninth. I’ve bet Robin five pounds that I shall go twenty times before they pop me over to France. Wouldn’t it be putrid luck if I went nineteen times and then went out and got shot?”