She bade him good-night in the empty lounge, and went upstairs to the bedroom’s rose and gilt harshness. She was going to be Julian’s mistress.... He was sure of her: she had noted his triumphant eyes and smiling mouth when he said good night.... Perhaps if she had offered to be Roddy’s mistress he would have agreed with alacrity. He too was not made for matrimony. She wished suddenly for Martin and sat down and started a letter to him; gave up after a few sentences, too heavy-minded to think; and went to bed. 10 The next day was _jour de fête_: there were to be grand balls, carnivals and exhibition-dancing in all the hotels. ‘We’ll make the round of them, Judy,’ said Julian. ‘And afterwards we’ll take the car and go up into the hills--shall we?’ And she thanked him and agreed. He was debonair, gay and gracious: the lines in his face seemed to have been smoothed out, and the likeness to Charlie was strongly in evidence. Dreaming ahead, she saw herself reluctantly, helplessly, plunging further and further into relationship with him. He would not weary of her soon. When once the thing started, the break with the past would inevitably be complete. Together they would be reckless, free; together they would snatch pleasure out of life’s worthlessness; for Julian had promised faithfully that he was going to give her exactly what she wanted, that he had learnt precisely how happiness was to be come by, and would teach her.... She had given him leave to teach her. Judiciously he absented himself for the day; and she spent the morning with Mamma, watching all the internally-disordered people pass, cup in hand up and down the _Place_ from spring to spring; and the afternoon with Mamma at the dressmaker’s; and the hours between tea and dinner with Mamma in the hotel-lounge, drearily banishing and recurring to thoughts of Roddy. Mamma sent her out to buy a copy of the Continental Daily Mail, which shrill-voiced women were excitedly advertising in the _Place_. Through her lorgnette, Mamma scanned the announcement of recent arrivals, the political outlook, the new French train smash, yawned, remarked that the holiday season in England seemed marked as usual by murders and drowning fatalities, yawned again and went upstairs to rest before her bridge-party. An hour yet till dinner and nothing to do but sit and think of things. Idly she picked up the evilly printed sheets. _Triple Boating Tragedy._ Why were they always triple? What must it be like to be relatives and friends of a triple boating tragedy? But that was a class disaster, like a charabanc death--not general. _Sailing Fatality off St. Catherine’s, Isle of Wight._ That was where Martin and Roddy were yachting. They might have witnessed it. _Tragic End of Well-known Young Yachtsman._ She had an impulse to put down the paper; but a name caught her eye and she had to go on reading.