quare-nailed hands beat gently
upon the piano till many people, unconsciously, began to sway ever so
little to and fro. An angry look came into Millie Deans's eyes, and when
the last drum throb died away and the little girl of Tombouctou slept
for ever in the sand, slain by her Prince of Darkness, for a reason that
seemed absurdly inadequate to the British composer who was a prop of the
provincial festivals, but quite adequate to almost every woman in the
room, her mouth set in a hardness that was almost menacing.

After ten minutes' conversation an English soprano sang Bach's _Heart
Ever Faithful_. Variety was always welcomed at the parties in Cadogan
Square.

"Glorious, old chap!" said the British composer. "We've come up into
God's air now."

The critic swung his right arm like a man who enjoyed bowling practice
at the nets.

"Lung exercise! Lung exercise!" he breathed. "And that drop at the end!
What a stroke of genius!"

Mrs. Shiffney had disappeared with Rades. She loved Bach--in the supper
room. In the general movement which took place when the soprano had left
the dais, escorted by Max Elliot, to have a glass of something, Charmian
found herself beside Margot Drake, the girl with the laurel leaves.

Margot and her sister Kit were extremely well known in London. Their
father was a very rich iron-master, a self-made man, who had been
created a Baronet and had married an ultra-aristocratic woman, the
beautiful Miss Enid Blensover, related to half the Peerage. The blend
had resulted in the two girls, who were certainly anything rather than
ordinary. They were half Blensovers and half Drakes: delicate, languid,
hot-house plants; shrewd, almost coarse, and pushing growths, hardy and
bold, and inclined to be impudent. In appearance they resembled their
mother, and they had often much of her enervated and almost decaying
manner. Her beauty was of the dropping-to-pieces type, bound together by
wonderful clothes of a fashion peculiar to herself and very effective.
But they had the energy, the ruthlessness, and the indifference to
opinion of their father, and loved to startle the world he had won for
himself. They were shameless, ultra-smart, with a sort of
half-condescending passion for upper Bohemia. And as neither their
mother nor they cared about anybody's private life or morals, provided
the sinner was celebrated, lovely, or amusing, they knew intimately,
even to calling by Christian names, all sorts of singers