girl in scarlet bent over from
the next table, her long coral earrings sliding down over her
collar-bones.

'Tight again,' said the girl.

'As a drum, Lissa, old girl!' said Duckie good temperedly.

'Nothing to what you'll be by and by,' added Lissa with the air of a
comforter.

'Nothing like, old dear! Have one with me, Lissa? No? No offence. You,
Zoe, have a _tord boyaux_?'

'No thanks.' Zoe was a good-looking short girl; her French nationality
written in every line of her round face, plump figure, and hands. Her
hair was pulled away from the fat nape of her neck. She looked competent
and wide awake. A housewife gone astray. Lissa, dark and Italian looking
in her red dress and coral earrings, was more languid than the others.
She was really a Greek, and all the grace of the East was in every
movement of her slim figure. In a moment the four women had clustered
together, forgetting strife.

Lissa had had a 'Bank of Engraving' note palmed off on her by a
pseudo-South American planter, and was rightly indignant. They were
still talking of Camille de Valenciennes and of her misfortunes with the
barber. Boys, the latest tip for Gatwick, 'what I said to him,' the
furriers' sales, boys again . . . Victoria listened to the conversation.
It still seemed like another world and yet her world. Here they were,
she and the other atoms, hostile every one, and a blind centripetal
force was kneading them together into a class. Yet any class was better
than the isolation in which she lived. Why not go further, hear more?

'I say, you girls,' she said suddenly, 'you've never been to my place.
Come and . . . no, not dine, it won't work . . . come and lunch with me
next week.'

Duckie smiled heavily.

'I don' min',' she said thickly.

Zoe looked suspicious for a moment.

'Can I bring Fritz?' asked Lissa.

'No, we can't have Fritz,' said Victoria smiling. 'Ladies only.'

'I'm on,' said Zoe suddenly. 'I was afraid you were going to have a lot
of swells in. Hate those shows. Never do you any good and you get so
crumpled.'

'You might let me bring Fritz,' said Lissa querulously.

'No men,' said Victoria firmly. 'Wednesday at one o'clock. All square?'

'Thatawright,' remarked Duckie. 'Shut it Lissa. Fritzawright. Tellm its
biz . . . bizness.'

With some difficulty they hoisted Duckie into a cab and sent her off to
Bloomsbury. As it drove off she popped her head out.

'Carriage paid,' she spluttered, 'or C. O. D.?'

Zo