“My dear fellow, would any woman with the least self-respect not be ashamed to let it be known she wore a dress like that in public?”
“A woman with the least self-respect—yes. But has Jessica the least self-respect?”
“Well, we know nothing against her, do we? We only think we have reason to suspect she may not be—well, all she poses to be. Queer her entertaining that Jew moneylender, don’t you think?”
“She may have a reason.”
“A woman with her income!”
“How do we know what her income is? Plenty of people with no money at all spend recklessly. She may be up to her ears in debt, and her friend Stapleton, too. The slim man talking to Stapleton is, I suppose, La Planta.”
They looked in the direction where two men, masked like the rest, were engaged in earnest conversation.
“I have not yet overcome my aversion from that young man,” Preston said as he watched them. “Every time I speak to him I feel he rings untrue. Ah, here come Yootha and Harry.”
Yootha, flushed with the night’s excitement, had probably never looked better. Her eyes shone with pleasure, for Hopford was an excellent dancer. It was nearly two in the morning now, and the revels were at their height.
Presently the band struck up the newest Jazz, a wild combination of almost every sound capable of being produced by musical and unmusical instruments, a sort of savage discord in many keys which clashed and blared to the accompaniment of human cries and trombone laughter. Carried away by what passed for music, the dancers who now thronged the floor performed the strangest evolutions. Some, locked in a close embrace, seemed oblivious of all but their own emotions as they gyrated in never-ending circles; others, barely touching, went through contortions which in any other place and under any other circumstances would have shocked some beholders, filled some with disgust, and convulsed the remainder with amusement.