"Is it? I don’t know. You can argue better than I can. You don’t lose your temper. Let’s bring it down to ourselves and our difficulties. The stage is a honey-pot and we girls are the honey in it, and the men are the flies buzzing round. They won’t leave us alone. They make it almost impossible for us to live a decent life. And if it’s decent it isn’t beautiful. You can’t call it beautiful, Lexie. This room’s the limit. Think of the food we eat. Generally beastly. And our clothes. Everything’s ugly and makeshift, and yet we’ve only got to stretch out our little fingers—" "More than our little fingers." "Well, if you like. Anyway, what are we waiting for? There’s no sense in it. It won’t get us any forrader. Why don’t you leave me alone? I’d almost made up my mind to give in when I met you. I should rather enjoy cutting a dash and having everything I want and going one better than the other girls who crow over us, and snapping my fingers at the management like Mortimer did to-day. If a man was going to marry me and give me a nice broad ring and a little home there’d be some reason for going on like this and keeping good; but men don’t ask chorus-girls to marry them, as a rule—not by a long chalk! Oh, goodnight!" She twisted on to her side, and the bedsprings groaned. From neighboring churches clocks began striking twelve. The noises from the street subsided. Only an occasional footfall was heard or a cart rumbling past. Sometimes a shrill voice broke the stillness, sometimes a drunken song. The girls slept. At dawn a cool breeze moved the dingy window curtain. Maggy woke and peered through the gray light at Alexandra, sleeping. She looked as though she were dead and at peace. Maggy wondered if that was the better fate. VI De Freyne did not seem to notice the efforts of the two girls in obeying his instructions to smarten up their appearance: he said nothing. But for all that, the change did not escape him. Maggy, in the draped cashmere affair struck him as likely to appeal to a Jew or a gentleman from Manchester. He had a particular individual of each type in his mind, and awaited a propitious moment for exploiting her to one or the other. For the next few days the attention of the girls would have to be devoted to rehearsals, not men.