Julian was studying her covertly, with flickering glances, though his attention was ostensibly for the company. He drank restlessly: the lines in his face were very marked. She would say something to him about the monotony of faces in a crowd; and then something about waved hair. After that she said: ‘Julian, does anybody know you’re here?’ ‘No, not a soul.’ ‘You left no address?’ ‘No. Paris is my headquarters. When I go off like this I prefer that the great world should await my return, not follow me.’ ‘Ah, you’re wise.’ She laughed. ‘It must make you feel so free.’ ‘Why did you ask?’ ‘Because it just occurred to me.’ Because they might have sent him a telegram: he was the eldest of the family, and they might have wanted him for all sorts of reasons: for the funeral.... But the body had not yet been recovered. Soon she must say to him: ‘Julian, Martin has been drowned.’ He would not much mind: they had never been very intimate: but of course they had shared that blood-intimacy of the circle. She must really tell him soon. 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?’ She gazed at him in dread, dumb. There was a reason. Soon--soon she would have to tell him; and then, when it had been spoken, imparted, it would be true for ever and ever. Not yet.