Cooper departed. Lennox remained where he was, watching the girl as the man in the hornshell spectacles whirled her out to the middle of the floor. The dance ended, the couples applauded languidly and shuffled. Lennox looked around desperately for Cooper. When he turned back to the dance floor he had lost the girl again. Before he could get panicky he saw her as the music started. She was alone on the floor, walking toward him, with square shoulders and lazy arms and hips. He could not believe his eyes. She came directly to the library stairs, stepped up and held out her hand. Lennox took it and felt both of them tremble slightly. "Why didn't you cut in?" she asked in a candid, transparent voice. He could not believe his ears. Drawing her with him, he backed into the white and gold oval library. She was smiling uncertainly. After a tremulous pause she asked: "Is this how it happens?" Lennox couldn't speak. There was a long silence; a long communication that seemed to dread words. "I'm frightened," she said. Lennox shook his head. "At first I thought I'd help. You know, the dance? Then I thought you were being hasty. And then it happened, didn't it?" Lennox nodded. "If you don't let go of my hand, I'll faint ... I think. What do we do now?" Before he could answer, Cooper appeared in the door with a magnificent white-haired woman wearing a bronze dress and a jade necklace. Both smiled. "Ah! Just in time," Cooper said, "Our hostess, Madam McVeagh. Jordan Lennox." "So nice to have you, Mr. Lennox." Alice McVeagh shook hands magnificently. Everything about her was magnificent and overpowering. "Gabby, dear, have you met the gentlemen? Jordan Lennox ... Sam Cooper. Gabby Valentine." She overpowered Lennox. "Sam tells me you're an author, Mr. Lennox. Do you write all night?" Lennox pulled himself together before the Presence. "No," he answered in the voice of the second son of the Marquis of Suffolk. "I work from nine to five, Mrs. McVeagh." "But how disappointing. Aren't you an artist?" "No, Mrs. McVeagh, I'm a business man. I sell ideas for a living." "Oh dear! And I had such a lovely picture of you ... working all night and smoking opium." "Only when he's plastered," Cooper grinned. Lennox looked at him stonily. Poor Jake! Standing there on his best behavior, tall and erect with his hands at his side; keeping his face wooden and unrecognizable, trying to belong on Alice McVeagh's terms, and destroying himself before Gabby Valentine. To his hostess he tried to appear austere, kindly, infallible and sophisticated. To Gabby he seemed hostile and unyielding. If only Cooper had come five minutes later. When he finally departed with the hostess and Lennox turned to resume the intimacy with Gabby, it was too late. "Gabby...." he began.