"What is she singing?"
Paliser covered her with his eyes. "Verdi's Segreto per esser felice—the secret of happiness. Such a simple secret too."
"Yes?" Margaret absently returned. She was looking now at the booth. Quite as vaguely she added: "In what does it consist?"
"In getting what we do not deserve."
There was nothing in that to offend. But the man's eyes, of which already she had been conscious, did offend. They seemed to disrobe her. Annoyedly she turned.
Paliser turned with her. "Verdi's bric-à-brac is very banal. Perhaps you prefer Strauss. His dissonances are more harmonic than they sound."
Now though there was applause. With a roulade the brindisi had ceased and the singer as though pleased, not with herself but with the audience, bowed. The fat woman twisting on her bench, was also smiling. She looked cheerful and evil.
"I do believe that's the Tamburini," Mrs. Austen remarked. "I heard her at the Academy, ages ago." The usual touch followed. "How she has gone off!"
The fat woman stood up, and, preceded by the girl, descended into the audience.
Margaret looked again at the booth. Lennox was coming out. He said a word to Miss Bleecker and glanced about the room.