l fluid. The waiters alone were insensible to its
influence. They moved to and fro with the impassivity and disdain of
eunuchs separated for ever from the world's temptations. Loud laughs
or shrill little shrieks exploded at intervals from the sinister
melancholy of the interior.

On Christine's left, at a round table in a corner, sat G.J.; on her
right, the handsome boy Molder. On Molder's right, Miss Aida Altown
spread her amplitude, and on G.J.'s left was a young girl known to
the company as Alice. Major Craive, the host, the splendid quality of
whose hospitality was proved by the flowers, the fruit, the bottles,
the cigar-boxes and the cigarette-boxes on the table, sat between
Alice and Aida Altown.

The three women on principle despised and scorned each other with
false warm smiles and sudden outbursts of compliment. Christine knew
that the other two detested her as being "one of those French girls"
who, under the protection of Free Trade, came to London and, by their
lack of scruple and decency, took the bread out of the mouths of the
nice, modest, respectable, English girls. She on her side disdained
both of them, not merely because they were courtesans (which
somehow Christine considered she really was not), but also for their
characteristic insipidity, lackadaisicalness and ignorance of the
technique of the profession. They expected to be paid for doing
nothing.

Aida Altown she knew by sight as belonging to a great rival Promenade.
Aida had reached the purgatory of obesity which Christine always
feared. Despite the largeness of her mass, she was a very beautiful
woman in the English manner, blonde, soft, idle, without a trace of
temperament, and incomparably dull and stupid. But she was ageing;
she had been favourably known in the West End continuously (save for
a brief escapade in New York) for perhaps a quarter of a century. She
was at the period when such as she realise with flaccid alarm that
they have no future, and when they are ready to risk grave imprudences
for youths who feel flattered by their extreme maturity. Christine
gazed calmly at her, supercilious and secure in the immense advantage
of at least fifteen years to the good.

And if she shrugged her shoulders at Aida for being too old,
Christine did the same at Alice for being too young. Alice was truly
a girl--probably not more than seventeen. Her pert, pretty, infantile
face was an outrage against the code. She was a mere amateur, with
ev