Jack and Sylvia were justified in their optimism, for gradually the Carnival Quartet, as they called themselves, became known in South Kensington, and they began to get engagements to appear in other parts of London. Jack taught Sylvia to vamp well enough on the guitar to accompany herself in duets with him; Claude looked handsome in his harlequin's dress, which prosperity had at last endowed with silver lozenges; Lily danced actively enough for the drawing-rooms in which they performed; Sylvia, inspired by the romantic exterior of herself and her companions, invented a mime to the music of Schumann's "Carnival" which Jack Airdale played, or, as Claude said, maltreated. The Quartet showed signs of increasing vitality with the approach of spring, and there was no need to think any more of touring in musical comedy, which was a relief to Sylvia. When summer came, they agreed to keep together and work the South Coast. However, all these plans came suddenly to nothing, because one misty night early in March Harlequin and Columbine lost Pierrot and Pierrette on the way home from a party in Chelsea; a brief note from Harlequin to Pierrot, which he found when he got home, indicated that the loss should be considered permanent. This treachery was a shock to Sylvia, and she was horrified at herself for feeling it so deeply. Ever since that day in Oxford when Lily had sobbed out her griefs, Sylvia had concentrated upon her all the capacity for affection which had begun to blossom during the time she was with Philip and which had been cut off ruthlessly with everything else that belonged to life with him. She knew that she should have foreseen the possibility, nay the probability, of this happening, but she had charmed herself with the romantic setting of their musical adventure and let all else go. "I'm awfully sorry, Sylvia," said Jack; "I ought to have kept a better lookout on Claude." "It's not your fault, old son. But, O God! why can't four people stay friends without muddling everything up with this accursed love?" Jack was sympathetic, but it was useless to confide in him her feeling for Lily; he would never understand. She would seem to him so little worth while; for him the behavior of such a one meant less than the breaking of a porcelain figure. "It did seem worth while," Sylvia said to herself, that night, "to keep that frail and lovely thing from this. It was my fault, of course, for I knew both Lily and Claude through and through. Yet what does it matter? What a fool I am. It was absurd of me to imagine we could go on forever as we were. I don't really mind about Lily; I'm angry because my conceit has been wounded. It serves me right. But that dirty little actor won't appreciate her. He's probably sick of her easiness already. Oh, why the hell am I not a man?"