Each lit a cigarette. The girl leaned back in a careless posture, throwing one leg over the other, and watched the smoke curling up in the air.
"First-rate institution, isn't it?" she said, with a laugh. "Sort of public sanatorium—though the fools of police or Government or whatever you call it won't make it free. All you men come here when you're tired and worried and ill, and we cure you—isn't that it?"
"I dare say…."
"But it is, though, take my word for it. How'd you ever get on without us, d'you think? Like fish out of water! And yet we're reckoned as outcasts and all that. Devil take all your society women, I say. There's one I see pass by every day, a judge's wife, haughty and stuck up as a weathercock on a church spire. Think she'd look at one of us? But her husband, bless you, he…."
"For Heaven's sake talk of something else," cried Olof. He swallowed a glass of sherry to cover his disgust.
"Eh? Oh, all right, anything you please. Sing you a song if you like.
What d'you say to that."
"Yes, but nothing…."
"Not a word. Dainty little song. Here you are:
"'Here's a corner for you and me,
Room for two—but not for three!
A glass for each within easy reach…
Just the place for a spree!'"
"How's that? Quite nice, isn't it?"