'No thanks.' Zoé was a good-looking short girl; her French nationality written in every line of her round face, plump figure, and hands. Her hair was pulled away from the fat nape of her neck. She looked competent and wide awake. A housewife gone astray. Lissa, dark and Italian looking in her red dress and coral earrings, was more languid than the others. She was really a Greek, and all the grace of the East was in every movement of her slim figure. In a moment the four women had clustered together, forgetting strife.
Lissa had had a 'Bank of Engraving' note palmed off on her by a pseudo-South American planter, and was rightly indignant. They were still talking of Camille de Valenciennes and of her misfortunes with the barber. Boys, the latest tip for Gatwick, 'what I said to him,' the furriers' sales, boys again . . . Victoria listened to the conversation. It still seemed like another world and yet her world. Here they were, she and the other atoms, hostile every one, and a blind centripetal force was kneading them together into a class. Yet any class was better than the isolation in which she lived. Why not go further, hear more?
'I say, you girls,' she said suddenly, 'you've never been to my place. Come and . . . no, not dine, it won't work . . . come and lunch with me next week.'
Duckie smiled heavily.
'I don' min',' she said thickly.
Zoé looked suspicious for a moment.
'Can I bring Fritz?' asked Lissa.
'No, we can't have Fritz,' said Victoria smiling. 'Ladies only.'
'I'm on,' said Zoé suddenly. 'I was afraid you were going to have a lot of swells in. Hate those shows. Never do you any good and you get so crumpled.'
'You might let me bring Fritz,' said Lissa querulously.