“What’s he to Hecuba?” The grinning blackamoors repeated the question, reiterated the answer on a tone of frightful unhappiness. The saxophone warbled on the verge of anguish. The couples revolved, marked time, stepped and stepped with an habitual precision, as though performing some ancient and profoundly significant rite. Some were in fancy dress, for this was a gala night at the cabaret. Young women disguised as callipygous Florentine pages, blue-breeched Gondoliers, black-breeched Toreadors circulated, moon-like, round the hall, clasped sometimes in the arms of Arabs, or white clowns, or more often of untravestied partners. The faces reflected in the mirrors were the sort of faces one feels one ought to know by sight; the cabaret was ‘Artistic.’ “What’s he to Hecuba?” Mrs. Viveash murmured the response, almost piously, as though she were worshipping almighty and omnipresent Nil. “I adore this tune,” she said, “this divine tune.” It filled up a space, it moved, it jigged, it set things twitching in you, it occupied time, it gave you a sense of being alive. “Divine tune, divine tune,” she repeated with emphasis, and she shut her eyes, trying to abandon herself, trying to float, trying to give Nil the slip. “Ravishing little Toreador, that,” said Gumbril, who had been following the black-breeched travesty with affectionate interest. Mrs. Viveash opened her eyes. Nil was unescapable. “With Piers Cotton, you mean? Your tastes are a little common, my dear Theodore.” “Green-eyed monster!” Mrs. Viveash laughed. “When I was being ‘finished’ in Paris,” she said, “Mademoiselle always used to urge me to take fencing lessons. _C’est un exercice très gracieux. Et puis_,” Mrs. Viveash mimicked a passionate earnestness, “_et puis, ça dévelope le bassin_. Your Toreador, Gumbril, looks as though she must be a champion with the foils. _Quel bassin!_” “Hush,” said Gumbril. They were abreast of the Toreador and her partner. Piers Cotton turned his long greyhound’s nose in their direction. “How are you?” he asked across the music. They nodded. “And you?” “Ah, writing such a book,” cried Piers Cotton, “such a brilliant, brilliant, flashing book.” The dance was carrying them apart. “Like a smile of false teeth,” he shouted across the widening gulf, and disappeared in the crowd. “What’s he to Hecuba?” Lachrymosely, the hilarious blackamoors chanted their question, mournfully pregnant with its foreknown reply. Nil, omnipresent nil, world-soul, spiritual informer of all matter. Nil in the shape of a black-breeched moon-basined Toreador. Nil, the man with the greyhound’s nose. Nil, as four blackamoors. Nil in the form of a divine tune. Nil, the faces, the faces one ought to know by sight, reflected in the mirrors of the hall. Nil this Gumbril whose arm is round one’s waist, whose feet step in and out among one’s own. Nothing at all.