t was nonsense."

She sank back. He saw moisture in her eyes and felt it in his own.

Chapter 28

SALOME

Lady Queenie arrived in haste, as though relentless time had pursued
her up the stairs.

"Why, you're in the dark here!" she exclaimed impatiently, and
impatiently switched on several lights. "Sorry I'm late, G.J.," she
said perfunctorily, without taking any trouble to put conviction into
her voice. "How have you two been getting on?"

She looked at Concepcion and G.J. in a peculiar way, inquisitorial and
implicatory.

Then, towards the door:

"Come in, come in, Dialin."

A young soldier with the stripe of a lance-corporal entered, slightly
nervous and slightly defiant.

"And you, Miss I-forget-your-name."

A young woman entered; she had very red lips and very high heels, and
was both more nervous and more defiant than the young soldier.

"This is Mr. Dialin, you know, Con, second ballet-master at the
Ottoman. I met him by sheer marvellous chance. He's only got ten
minutes; he hasn't really got that; but he's going to see me do my
Salome dance."

Lady Queenie made no attempt to introduce Miss I-forget-your-name, who
of her own accord took a chair with a curious, dashed effrontery. It
appeared that she was attached to Mr. Dialin. Lady Queenie cast off
rapidly gloves, hat and coat, and then, having rushed to the bell and
rung it fiercely several times, came back to the chaise-longue and
gazed at it and at the surrounding floor.

"Would you mind, Con?"

Concepcion rose. Lady Queenie, rushing off again, pushed several more
switches, and from a thick cluster of bulbs in front of a large mirror
at the end of the room there fell dazzling sheets of light. A footman
presented himself.

"Push the day-bed right away towards the window," she commanded.

The footman inclined and obeyed, and the lance-corporal superiorly
helped him. Then the footman was told to energise the gramophone,
which in its specially designed case stood in a corner. The footman
seemed to be on intimate terms with the gramophone. Meanwhile Lady
Queenie, with a safety-pin, was fastening the back hem of her short
skirt to the front between the knees. Still bending, she took her
shoes off. Her scent impregnated the room.

"You see, it will be barefoot," she explained to Mr. Dialin.

The walls of London were already billed with an early announcement of
the marvels of the Pageant of Terpsichore, which was to occur at the
Alber