At it, Cassy, just showing the point of her strawberry tongue, exclaimed without rancour: "Ma Tamby has thrown us over." Paliser lit a cigarette. "She may be singing in the private room." Cassy laughed again. "Yes. 'Una voce poco fa!' That would be just the thing--wouldn't it?--to sing privately in private." Paliser answered, though what, she did not hear. The orchestra drowned it and for a moment she considered him, conscious that he was less objectionable than he had seemed, yet entirely unconscious that such objection as she had experienced was due to his extreme good-looks, which in a man are always objectionable to a woman when she herself is handsome, for they make him resemble her and, in so doing, constitute an encroachment on her prerogatives, which, in itself, is an affront. Cassy, ignorant of the psychology of it, equally unaware that familiarity which may breed contempt can also dissolve dislike, and feeling merely a lessening of her instinctive hostility, told herself that he was perhaps not as cocky as he looked and drank of the glass before her. The Clos de Vougeot which, to the educated palate, is art, literature and song combined, meant nothing more to her than if it had been Medoc. She drank it because it was there at her hand, as she would have drunk water, without savouring it, without any realisation of the enormity of the crime. Yet though it meant nothing, nothing at least of which she was aware, the royal cru was affecting her. It modified and mollified, admonishing her that this man was an inoffensive insect who, circumstances favouring, might, as Ma Tamby when inserting the flea had told her, put her father on his feet. In just what the favouring circumstances could consist, the fallen star had not bothered to indicate, and she had not bothered because they were too obvious and also because she was sure that Cassy was not insane. Paliser abandoned his cigarette. "If you like, we might look in at the Metropolitan. I believe I have a box." Apart from down-stage and the centre of it, apart, too, from the flys and the dressing-rooms, Cassy's imagination had not as yet conceived anything more beckoning than a box at the opera, even though, as on this occasion, the opera happened to be a concert. "Why, yes. Only----" Pausing, she looked about. The imperial lady had gone. "Only what?" Paliser very needlessly asked for he knew. "I fear I am a bit overdressed." "Not for Sunday. The house will be full and nobody in it. Besides, what do you care?" Cassy shrugged. "Personally, not a rap. It was of you I was thinking." Paliser, who had been signing the check and feeing the waiter, looked at her. "I did not know that you were so considerate." Cassy, in surprise not at him, but at herself, laughed. "Nor did I." Paliser stood up and drew back her chair. "Be careful. You might become cynical. It is in thinking of others that cynicism begins."