she gave him the kiss for her mother.

And as she kissed him, Mr. Prohack was very proud of his daughter--so
efficient, so sound, so straight, so graceful.

"She's all right, anyway," he reflected. And yet she could be ecstatic
in the arms of that perfect ass! And in the taxi: "Fancy me seeing home
this dancing-mistress!" Eliza lived at Brook Green. She was very
elegant, and quite unexceptionable until she opened her mouth. She
related to him how her mother, who had once been a _premier sujet_ in
the Covent Garden ballet, was helpless from sciatica. But she related
this picturesque and pride-causing detail in a manner very insipid,
naive, and even vulgar, (After all there was a difference between First
Division and Second Division in the Civil Service!) She was boring him
terribly before they reached Brook Green. She took leave with a
deportment correct but acquired at an age too late. Still, he had liked
to see her home in the taxi. She was young, and she was an object
pleasing to the eye. He realised that he was not accustomed to the
propinquity of young women. What would his cronies at the Club say to
the escapade?... Odd, excessively odd, that the girl should be Sissie's
partner, in a business enterprise of so odd a character!... The next
thing was to meet Eve after the escapade. Should he keep to the
defensive, or should he lead off with an attack apropos of the Eagle
car?

CHAPTER IX

COLLISION

I

After an eventful night Mr. Prohack woke up late to breakfast in bed.
Theoretically he hated breakfast in bed, but in practice he had recently
found that the inconveniences to himself were negligible compared to the
intense and triumphant pleasure which his wife took in seeing him
breakfast in bed, in being fully dressed while he was in pyjamas and
dressing-gown, and in presiding over the meal and over him. Recently
Marian had formed the habit of rising earlier and appearing to be very
busy upon various minute jobs at an hour when, a few weeks previously,
she would scarcely have decided that day had given place to night. Mr.
Prohack, without being able precisely to define it, thought that he
understood the psychology of the change in this unique woman. Under
ordinary circumstances he would have been worried by his sense of
fatigue, but now, as he had nothing whatever to do, he did not much care
whether he was tired or not. Neither the office nor the State would
suffer through his lack of tone.

The ev