tions
with Craive. They had begun at a club, over cards. The two had little
in common--Craive was a stockbroker when world-wars did not happen
to be in progress--but G.J. greatly liked him because, with all his
crudity, he was such a decent, natural fellow, so kind-hearted,
so fresh and unassuming. And Craive on his part had developed an
admiration for G.J. which G.J. was quite at a loss to account for. The
one clue to the origin of the mysterious attachment between them had
been a naive phrase which he had once overheard Craive utter to a
mutual acquaintance: "Old G.J.'s so subtle, isn't he?"

G.J. said to himself, reconsidering the proposal:

"And why on earth not?"

And then aloud, soothingly, to Craive:

"All right! All right!"

The Major brightened and said to Molder:

"You'll come, of course?"

"Oh, rather!" answered Molder, quite simply.

And G.J., again to himself, said:

"I am a simpleton."

The Major's pleading, and the spectacle of the two officers with their
precarious hold on life, humiliated G.J. as well as touched him. And,
if only in order to avoid the momentary humiliation, he would have
been well content to be able to roll back his existence and to have
had a military training and to be with them in the sacred and proud
uniform.

"Now listen here!" said the Major. "About the aforesaid pretty
ladies--"

There they stood together in the corner, hiding several of Rops's
eccentricities, ostensibly discussing art, charity, world-politics,
the strategy of war, the casualty lists.

Chapter 23

THE CALL

Christine found the night at the guinea-fowl rather dull. The
supper-room, garish and tawdry in its decorations, was functioning as
usual. The round tables and the square tables, the tables large and
the tables small, were well occupied with mixed parties and couples.
Each table had its own yellow illumination, and the upper portion
of the room, with a certain empty space in the centre of it, was
bafflingly shadowed. Between two high, straight falling curtains could
be seen a section of the ball-room, very bright against the curtains,
with the figures of dancers whose bodies seemed to be glued to each
other, pale to black or pale to khaki, passing slowly and rhythmically
across. The rag-time music, over a sort of ground-bass of syncopated
tom-tom, surged through the curtains like a tide of the sea of
Aphrodite, and bathed everyone at the supper-tables in a mysterious
aphrodisiaca