They were dancing now. The room was full of smoke and light and sickly scent; and the heat was choking. Everybody was rising to dance.
One of the American young men from her hotel was bowing and murmuring in front of her.
‘Not just now, thank you so much.’ She flashed a smile at him. ‘Perhaps later on....’
Oh, the queer marionettes bobbing up and down in their mechanical motions! How could people look so serious and perform such imbecile antics? But they were not real people.
‘Look, Julian, there’s the Spanish boy we played against in the tournament. He’s good-looking, isn’t he? He’s simply enrapturing that girl. Hasn’t he got a lazy smile?... You know, however ugly a Frenchwoman’s body is at any rate it is a body and she’s not ashamed of it. Those English people are just bundles of clothes. If you undressed them there’d be nothing. That’s the whole difference.... Oh, look, they’re giving out favours. Oh, I’d like a fan. Let’s dance.’
Threading her way through the crowded tables, she passed a party of fat elderly Frenchmen and heard one say to another, loudly and with drunken excitement:
‘Mais regardez donc un peu! En blanc—vois tu? Elle est bien, celle-là. C’est tout à fait mon type.’
Their faces leered at her out of a dream.
Julian took her once round the room and then looked down at her and said:
‘You can’t dance to-night. What’s the matter?’