Her husband was a clever, sardonic man, who let his pretty wife do exactly as she liked. He said that marriage resembled vaccination, it might take well or ill, and as for him he put up with the result for quietness. To his great amusement, his wife had almost persuaded herself that she was in love with Gobion. He looked so young and fresh, with such a pretty mouth, and such expressive eyes. She felt a desire to taste all this dawn.
Picton quite understood, and resolved to use Gobion for his own purposes, as it seemed necessary to have him in the house. Accordingly after dinner he asked him a good many questions about The Pilgrim and its editor. His tongue being loosened by champagne, Gobion made fun of Heath, an easy subject of ridicule, and blasphemed against The Pilgrim.
"Heath is a sort of literary fat boy, an urchin Rabelais," he said.
"Look here, I'll give you ten guineas for a column in The Spy, showing up Heath and The Pilgrim. You needn't give names. Just make it racy, and cut into the old elephant. You'll excuse my talkin' shop in my own house, but I should like to have you on The Spy very much."
Gobion was flattered. The Spy was disreputable, but big and important. He agreed to do an article for the next issue, and as the arrangement was concluded, the butler came in to say that the ladies were ready to start. Bidding his host good-night, he went up to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Picton and her sister Veda Leuilette were waiting.
They drove to the "Criterion," and the air of the carriage was heavy with the scent of flowers and a subtle odour of white lilac, and the frou-frou of skirts seemed to accentuate the perfume. They drove up to the theatre, the footman springing down to open the door, and Gobion helped the ladies out. As they went into the foyer he noticed Wild and Blanche Huntley going into the stalls. It was very pleasant to take care of two strikingly pretty women, and Gobion was conscious of a wish that some of his Oxford friends, who had imagined that his flight to London practically meant starvation, could see him now.
The house was full of celebrities. There were warm scents in the air, and from their box they could see vaguely as through a mist a parterre of bright colours, the swirl of a fan, the gleaming of white arms, and the occasional sharp scintillation from a diamond ring or bracelet, while beyond, the space under the circle was crowded with rows of white faces framed in black.
Mrs. Picton was dressed in pale blue crêpe-de-chine, looking very lovely, and her violet eyes flashed a dangerous fascination while Gobion and she consulted the programme. Soon after their entrance the band came in, and began to play a lazy, swinging waltz, which seemed to Gobion to harmonize strangely with the apricot light of the theatre. The whole scene struck an unreal and exotic note; he felt a strange deadening of thought, a dreamy sensuousness more physical than mental, and every time Mrs. Picton leant back to make some remark, with a little flash of white teeth framed in wine-red lips, her looks stung his blood.
One of her hands lay on the cushion of the box, white and soft, with rosy filbert nails.
"How Botticelli would have loved to paint your hands," he said, speaking a little thickly.