She’d look charming in a wrapper, George thought. The queer little boyish thing! I can just imagine her. It would be blue, a kind of filmy blue crêpe. Coming up the stairs the morning sunlight would catch her, through those big windows: her small curves delicately outlined in a haze of soft colour, her hair tousled, a flash of white ankle as she reached the top step. He would sit up on the window seat, as though just drowsily awakened. Oh ... good-morning! Good-morning. What a picture you would make. Silhouette Before Breakfast. Life is full of so many heavenly pictures.... The bay window above the garden would be calm and airy in the before-breakfast freshness of July; the house just beginning that dreamy stir that precedes the affairs of day. She would come across to him ... he had hardly dared admit, even to himself, how far they had gone in imagination.... “I’m damned if I want strange women careering all over the house in their wrappers,” he said with well-simulated peevishness. “Bosh!” exclaimed Phyllis. “There’s nothing you’d like better. Unless without their wrappers.” “What’s the use of being vulgar?” he said. He thought: How gorgeous Phyllis is. You can’t fool her. Poor old George, thought Phyllis. I believe he imagines that he’s attractive to women. But I won’t say that to him, he’s in such a stew already. “Miss Clyde is one of the most truly refined people I ever met.” This didn’t quite succeed. Phyllis was always annoyed when George attempted to bunco her. He was so transparent. “I believe you imagine you’re attractive to women,” she said. “Hell,” he said, “I don’t even take time to think about it.” “If that were true, you’d be much more so.” If I’d finished this cursed booklet, he thought, I’d take a little time off and _be_ attractive to women, just to surprise her. Why, damnation, I could even make Phyl fall in love with me if it was worth taking the trouble. The way to please women is to show them that you know they’re not happy. And that their special kind of unhappiness is a particularly subtle and lonely one, but curable by sympathy. But it’s better not to think about these things at all. It’s queer to think of all the people in the world, and how troubled they are when they look each other straight in the eyes. If I knew why that is, I’d know everything. The devil of it is, women have begun to think. That’s why everything is so uneasy. Why even Phyllis has begun to think. I mustn’t let her, because she’s too fond of being comfortable. It’ll only upset her. She _must_ be kept amused. That’s the beauty of money, it’s a substitute for thinking. It can surround you with delightful distractions. It’s like women, too: it comes to the fellows who know how to entertain it. I must learn how to be attractive to money.