Irene was not affected by her success. What she really liked was to stay at home and to entertain a few intimate Greek friends. When Lewis came home he would hear a guttural conversation punctuated by twitterings coming from the drawing-room; a committee meeting of a Philhellenic benevolent society. He could not understand a word, his recollection of Greek roots being quite useless. Olympus made a noise like a duck-pond. He would fly after catching sight of four or five people amongst whom was aunt Clytemnestra, all very dark and very rich, with blue eyebrows, eyes like chocolate caramels and emeralds the size of paving stones or diamonds like heaps of pounded ice on their fingers. He would shut himself in his study, put his feet up on his table and think of Irene, wondering how he could give her proofs of his affection and at the same time get even with her. XII OFFICIAL QUOTATIONS Dividends. Previous Name of Opening Closing Closing. Security. Price. Price. 70 1,065 Apostolatos 1,080 1,106 Bank 540 Franco-African 535 510 Bank XIII THREE weeks after issue the Greek loan had been doubly subscribed at the offices of the Apostolatos Bank alone. One evening Irene and Lewis decided to celebrate this success and to emerge from their solitude. There were no half-measures in their celebration. Irene wore a silver tissue dress which contrasted with her face, deepening the warmth of her Oriental complexion: she was black and silver like the ikons of her country. "How perfect she is," thought Lewis, going to fetch her in her room, and looking at her lithely curving body beneath the clinging dress. They dined, too well, in the midst of dancing, rounded shoulders, and machine-like dinner jackets. Irene compared these stars from the Rue de la Paix, the laughter and the surfeit of make-up, with Trieste in the evening, with its two cinemas and the officers wrapped in their capes stalking up and down before the Café du Veneto. The whole evening they wandered from one cabaret to another, from the Rue Caumartin to Montmartre. Up there Lewis met some friends. Whilst a dancer, caught in a bundle of limelight rays, was carrying his partner off round his neck like a deer, Irene found herself being introduced to a handsome, self-possessed, slightly faded woman with a geranium-coloured mouth and sly eyes, who immediately took an interest in her. At the first opportunity she asked Lewis her name. "Why, it's Elsie Magnac." Lewis had often spoken of her. Without ever having met her Irene had taken a dislike to her. "I don't even like to think of her being alive," she told Lewis one day. What wrong opinions one can form of people! Elsie Magnac was charming. They became friends at once. She joined their party. They danced and drank together.