TO bring together certain of the dramatic critics (such high arbiters of the stage as Sylvester Fry of the Dispatch, Lupin Petrol of Now, Amethyst Valer of Fashion, Berinthia of Woodfalls (the terrible, the embittered Berinthia who was also Angela)), cards had been sent out from Foreign-Colony Street, in the comprehensive name of Sir Oliver Dawtry, the famous banker and financier, to meet the new lessee of the Source.
It was one of those sultry summer nights of electricity and tension, when nerves at almost nothing are apt to explode. Beyond the iron Calvary on the Ursulines’ great wall, London flared with lights.
Perched upon a parapet in brilliant solitude, her identity unsuspected by the throng, Miss Sinquier, swathed in black mousseline and nursing a sheaf of calla lilies, surveyed the scene with inexpressive eyes.
“And there was the wind bellowing and we witches wailing: and no Macbeth!” a young man with a voice like cheap scent was saying to a sympathetic journalist for whatever it might be worth....
Miss Sinquier craned her head.
Where were the two “Washingtons”? or the little Iris girl?
By the Buddha shrine, festively decked with lamps, couples were pirouetting to a nigger band, while in the vicinity of the buffet, a masked adept was holding a clairaudience of a nature only to be guessed at from afar. An agile negro melody, wild rag-time with passages of almost Wesleyan hymnishness—reminiscent of Georgia gospel-missions; the eighteenth century in the Dutch East Indies—charmed and soothed the ear.
Miss Sinquier jigged her foot.
At their cell windows, as if riveted by the lights and commotion, leaned a few pale nuns.
Poor things.