ments, except with the widow in
Woodhouse, who had long ago been a servant at Manchester House, and
even now came in to do cleaning.

Odd, eccentric people they were, these entertainers. Most of them
had a streak of imagination, and most of them drank. Most of them
were middle-aged. Most of them had an abstracted manner; in ordinary
life, they seemed left aside, somehow. Odd, extraneous creatures,
often a little depressed, feeling life slip away from them. The
cinema was killing them.

Alvina had quite a serious flirtation with a man who played a flute
and piccolo. He was about fifty years old, still handsome, and
growing stout. When sober, he was completely reserved. When rather
drunk, he talked charmingly and amusingly--oh, most charmingly.
Alvina quite loved him. But alas, _how_ he drank! But what a charm
he had! He went, and she saw him no more.

The usual rather American-looking, clean-shaven, slightly pasty
young man left Alvina quite cold, though he had an amiable and truly
chivalrous _galanterie_. He was quite likeable. But so unattractive.
Alvina was more fascinated by the odd fish: like the lady who did
marvellous things with six ferrets, or the Jap who was tattooed all
over, and had the most amazing strong wrists, so that he could throw
down any collier, with one turn of the hand. Queer cuts these!--but
just a little bit beyond her. She watched them rather from a
distance. She wished she could jump across the distance.
Particularly with the Jap, who was almost quite naked, but clothed
with the most exquisite tattooing. Never would she forget the eagle
that flew with terrible spread wings between his shoulders, or the
strange mazy pattern that netted the roundness of his buttocks. He
was not very large, but nicely shaped, and with no hair on his
smooth, tattooed body. He was almost blue in colour--that is, his
tattooing was blue, with pickings of brilliant vermilion: as for
instance round the nipples, and in a strange red serpent's-jaws over
the navel. A serpent went round his loins and haunches. He told her
how many times he had had blood-poisoning, during the process of his
tattooing. He was a queer, black-eyed creature, with a look of
silence and toad-like lewdness. He frightened her. But when he was
dressed in common clothes, and was just a cheap, shoddy-looking
European Jap, he was more frightening still. For his face--he was
not tattooed above a certain ring low on his neck--was yellow and
flat and