"Settled--with Aggie?" "No: not yet. But with the lady I'm going off with. My word of honour. I am; next week." Nona gave an incredulous laugh. "So this is good-bye?" "Very nearly." "Poor Stan!" "Nona ... listen ... look here..." She took his hand. "Stan, hang next week!" "Nona--?" She shook her head, but let her hand lie in his. "No questions--no plans. Just being together," she pleaded. He held her in silence and their lips met. "Then why not--?" "No: the Housetop--the Housetop!" she cried, pulling herself out of his arms. "Why, you're crying!" "I'm not! It's the rain. It's--" "Nona!" "Stan, you know it's no earthly use." "Life's so rotten--" "Not like this." "This? This--what?" She struggled out of another enfolding, put her head out of the window, and cried: "The Housetop!" They found a corner at the back of the crowded floor. Nona blinked a little in the dazzle of light-garlands, the fumes of smoke, the clash of noise and colours. But there he and she sat, close together, hidden in their irresistible happiness, and though his lips had their moody twist she knew the same softness was in his veins as in hers, isolating them from the crowd as completely as if they had still been in the darkness of the taxi. That was the way she must take her life, she supposed; piece-meal, a tiny scrap of sweetness at a time, and never more than a scrap--never once! Well--it would be worse still if there were no moments like this, short and cruel as they seemed when they came. The Housetop was packed. The low balcony crammed with fashionable people overhung them like a wreath of ripe fruits, peachy and white and golden, made of painted faces, bare arms, jewels, brocades and fantastic furs. It was the music-hall of the moment. The curtain shot up, and the little auditorium was plunged in shadow. Nona could leave her hand in Heuston's. On the stage--a New Orleans cotton-market--black dancers tossed and capered. They were like ripe fruits too, black figs flung about in hot sunshine, falling to earth with crimson bursts of laughter splitting open on white teeth, and bounding up again into golden clouds of cotton-dust. It was all warm and jolly and inconsequent. The audience forgot to smoke and chatter: little murmurs of enjoyment rippled over it. The curtain descended, the light-garlands blossomed out, and once more floor and balcony were all sound and movement. "Why, there's Lita up there in the balcony," Nona exclaimed, "just above the stage. Don't you see--with Ardwin, and Jack Staley, and Bee Lindon, and that awful Keiler woman?" She had drawn her hand away at the sight of the box full. "I don't see Jim with them after all. Oh, how I hate that crowd!" All the ugly and disquieting realities she had put from her swept back with a rush. If only she could have had her one evening away from them! "I didn't think we should find them here--I thought Lita had been last week."