Audrey read the note. Very short, it was signed "Jane" and "Nick," and dated from a house in Fitzroy Street. It caused acute excitement in Audrey. "I shall come at once," said she. Getting rid of Aguilar, she knocked at the door of No. 37. "Read that," she ordered Miss Ingate and Madame Piriac, giving them the note jointly. "And are you going?" said Miss Ingate, nervous and impressed. "Of course," Audrey answered. "Don't they ask me to go at once? I meant to write to my cousins at Woodbridge and my uncles in the colonies, and tell them all that I was settling down at last. And I meant to look at those new flats in Park Lane with Musa. But I shall have to leave all that for the present. Also my lunch." "But, darling," put in Madame Piriac, who had been standing before the dressing-table trying on a hat. "But, darling, it is very serious, this matter. What about your husband?" "He'll keep," said Audrey. "He's had his turn. I must have mine now. I haven't had a day off from being a wife for ever so long. And it's a little enervating, you know. It spoils you for the fresh air." "I imagined to myself that you two were happy in an ideal fashion," murmured Madame Piriac. "So we are!" said Audrey. "Though a certain coolness did arise over the luggage this morning. But I don't want to be ideally happy all the time. And I won't be. I want--I want all the sensations there are; and I want to be everything. And I can be. Musa understands." "If he does," said Miss Ingate, "he'll be the first husband that ever did." Her lips were sardonic. "Well, of course," said Audrey nonchalantly, "he _is_. Didn't you know that?... And didn't you tell me not to forget Lady Southminster?" "Did I?" said Miss Ingate. Audrey heard voices in the corridor. Musa was parting from a subservient Shinner. Also the luggage was bumping along the carpet. She called her husband into No. 37 and kissed him rather violently in front of Madame Piriac and Miss Ingate, and showed him the note. Then she whispered to him, smiling. "What's that you're whispering?" Miss Ingate archly demanded. "Nothing. I was only asking him to come and help me to open my big trunk. I want something out of it. Au revoir, you two." "What do you think of it all, Madame Piriac?" Miss Ingate inquired when the pair were alone. "'All the sensations there are!' 'Everything!'" Madame Piriac repeated Audrey's phrases. "One is forced to conclude that she has an appetite for life." "Yes," said Miss Ingate, "she wants the lion's share of it, that's what she wants. No mistake. But of course she's young." "I was never young like that." "Neither was I! Neither was I!" Miss Ingate asseverated. "But something vehy, vehy strange has come over the world, if you ask me." End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lion's Share, by E. Arnold Bennett