tinued to be
until, well, until a miracle occurred. You appeared, I was healed, I saw
and I saw but you. What do you say?"

"That your conversation is singularly edifying." In speaking, Cassy
gathered her gloves with an air slightly hilarious but not in the least
naif. Before Paliser could cut in, she added: "If I don't hurry, Ma
Tamby will be out and I shall lose my lesson."

Paliser shifted. She is devilish pretty, he thought. But is she worth
it? For a second he considered the possible scandal which he had
considered before.

He stood up. "Let me take you. We can stop for the song on the way."

XVIII

"My Carlottatralala! Dear Carlottatralala!"

Lightly at the door, Cassy strung the words to a mazourka. Her voice
twisted, swung, danced into a trill that was captured by echoes that
carried it diminishingly down the stairway of the mansion where Carlotta
Tamburini lived.

"Eh?"

Partially the door opened. A fat slovenly woman showed an unpowdered
nose, a loose unpainted mouth, and, at sight of Paliser, backed. "For
God's sake! One moment, dearie. Straight ahead. With you in two shakes."

Cassy, her yellow frock swishing, led the way to a room furnished with
heaped scores, with a piano, a bench, chairs and a portrait, on foot, of
a star before the fall. Adjacently were framed programmes, the faded
tokens of forgetless and forgotten nights, and, with them, the usual
portraits of the usual royalties, but perhaps unusually signed. The
ex-diva had attended to that herself.

Paliser, straddling the bench, put his hat on the piano and looked at
Cassy, who had gone to the window. It was not the palaces opposite that
she saw. Before her was a broken old man revamped. In his hand was a
baton which he brandished demoniacally at an orchestra of his own. The
house foamed with faces, shook with applause, and without, at the
glowing gates, a chariot carried him instantly to the serenities of
elaborate peace.

"It won't take over an hour."

The vision vanished. Across the way, in a window opposite, a young man
was dandling, twirling one side of a moustache, cocking a conquering
eye. Cassy did not see him. Directly behind her another young man was
talking. She did not hear.

On leaving the restaurant and, after it, the music-shop, the car had
taken them into the Park where Paliser, alleging that he was out of
matches, had handed her into another restaurant where more Vichy was put
before her and, with it, that