"Do you mean me, Mademoiselle?"
"And why not, Monsieur le docteur? Would it be so strange? You say you love nobody. But it seems you love ze poor fat Moretti—terribly, terribly, no doubt, so that you almost break your small 'eart for 'er. And per'aps someone else too. You say you don't drink—but you are just a leetle drunk already. You are not different from ze rest. I tell you that before—and I know. I am a connoisseur. It is written—'ere in the eyes and in the mouth. It is dangerous, the way you live. Quant a moi—I don't want you, my friend—we two—that would be an eruption—a disaster—I should be afraid."
She pretended to shudder, and a moment later seemed to forget him altogether. She pressed her cigarette out on her plate and went over to the piano, touching Cosgrave lightly on the shoulder as she passed him.
"Come, my latest best-beloved, we 'ave to amuse ze company. We sing our leetle song together."
But first she made a deep low bow to the shadowy theatre. She kissed her fingers to the empty boxes that stared down at her with hollow, mournful eyes. (Were there ghosts there too, Stonehouse wondered bitterly? The unlucky Frederick, perhaps, with the fatal hole gaping above the temple, applauding, leaning towards her!)
She sang worse than usual. She was hoarse, and what voice she had gave way altogether. It did not seem to matter either to her or to anyone else. What she could not sing she danced. There was a chorus and they joined in filling the gloom behind them with sullen, ironic echoes. She reduced them all, Stonehouse thought, to the cabaret from which she sprang.
And it was comic to see Cosgrave with his head thrown back, playing the common, noisy stuff as though inspired.
When it was over he swung round, gaping at them with drunken, confidential earnestness.
"You know, when I was a kid I used to see myself—on a stage like this—playing the Moonlight Sonata."
She rumpled up his thick hair so that it stood on end like Loga's names.