"Of course I don’t suggest that you were done in the eye. Probably you got the value of your dibs. But you’ll have something better to spend cash on presently. Me, too! We must both draw in our horns now, Kittums. For the sake of—you know who! ... Hullo! Is anything wrong?" She had winced, but she gritted her little teeth, and fought back the rising hysteria. She could have shrieked, or thrown the little coffee-pot at his head. He went on, recognising friends through the smoke-haze: "There’s Lady Beau with that German aviator-chap we met in Paris. Big red-headed brute. You remember him? And—who’s the girl? But for her hair, I’d say it was Miss Saxham. By the Great Brass Hat, it is! With a wig, or dyed...." "Dyed. It was done in Paris—done most beautifully." Margot’s eyes had lighted up with interest. "I must have forgotten to tell you. I’ve known it three or four days. Don’t you like it?" "Like it?" Franky had reached for his little glass and gulped the contents hurriedly. "My stars, I never saw such a transformation. Order another Kümmel, please, to give me a buck-up." "Take mine. I simply loathe the sticky stuff." She added, as Franky obliged: "_I_ think that Pat looks ripping." "All too ripping. That’s where the trouble comes in." He went on: "When her hair was black, you knew where it was you’d seen her. Makin’ one in an endless procession of women—all with long eyes and big busts and curving hips, walkin’—like pussy-cats along a roof-ridge, on the walls of those old Egyptian temples we did together—that November when I got such spoons on you—going up with the Gillinghams from Cairo to Philae—a flat-bottomed Nile tug towin’ the whole crowd in a string of dahabeahs. You remember those ochre-coloured Nile sunrises? When a dust-storm had been blowin’ over the Desert, and the River was all wrinkly white, like curdled milk." "How killingly poetic!" "Am I poetic? Good egg! Never thought I’d live to be called that." "Live and learn!" Margot’s laugh was a hard little silvery tinkle. She too was remembering the sunrises and sunsets of Egypt, and the long days under the green canvas awnings. How beautiful she had thought the brown eyes that seemed only vacuous now. She, Margot, would be ugly very soon now, she told herself. Already her small face showed lines and hollows. Soon beauty-loving men and women would turn their eyes away.... Her cheval-glass would tell her why, and shop-windows when she passed them would reveal her shapelessness. She would only possess interest for three people. For the doctor, as a patient. For the certificated nurse, as a Case. For her husband, as the potential mother of the boy he longed for. And—what price Margot? "Should you like me to take you to see some polo, or wouldn’t a chuff-chuff in the country be best?" Franky’s eyes were full of hungry solicitude as they rested on the small, pinched features. "You look a bit fagged, it strikes me!"