"Is that enough?"
And then before he could draw back she had kissed him between the eyes.
"Quite, then. I keep it for a mascot, and you will remember to-morrow morning, when you are ver' grave and important with some poor frightened patient, that Gyp Labelle kiss you last night, and that you are not different from ze others, after all. And I will take my shilling from under my pillow, and say: 'Poor Gyp, that's what you're worth, my friend!'"
"He doesn't know you yet."
Robert Stonehouse looked up sharply. The interruption had started a new train of thought. Beyond the flushed face of the man opposite him, he could see the empty stalls, row after row of gaunt-ribbed and featureless spectators, watching him. The play had become a nightmare farce in which he had chosen a ludicrous, impossible part. But he had to go on now.
"Except for Cosgrave there, I've known Mademoiselle Labelle longer than any of you. I've known her ever since I was a boy."
He felt rather than saw their expressions change. She too stared with an arrested interest, but he looked away from her to Cosgrave, smiling ironically. If it humiliated her and made her ridiculous too—well, that was what he wanted. He wanted to pay her back—most of all for the excitement boiling in him—the sense of having been toppled out of his serenity into a torrent of noise and colour by that audacious touch of her lips upon his face. And there was Cosgrave—and then again some older score to be paid off—something far off and indistinct that would presently come clear.
"Don't you remember, Rufus?"
"Rather. But I know you a minute longer, Mademoiselle. I saw you before he did."
"That was because Mademoiselle Moretti rode first."