Chapter XX: _Fete Galante_

For some weeks after the incident of the opal, there was no development of the problem of behavior. Maurice did not refer to the subject, and Jenny was very glad to put it out of her mind. As if by tacit agreement, they both took refuge from any solution in a gayety that might have been assumed, so sedulously was it cultivated. Everything else was set aside for a good time, and though there were interludes when in the seclusion of an afternoon spent together they would recapture the spirit of that golden and benign October, these lovers generally seemed anxious to share with their friends the responsibilities of enjoyment.

Thus it came about that a polity of pleasure was established whose citizens were linked together by ties of laughter. This city state of Bohemia, fortified against intrusion by experiences which the casual visitor was not privileged to share, stood for Jenny as the solidest influence upon her life so far. It gave her a background for Maurice, which made him somehow more real. Without this little society, acknowledging herself and him as supreme and accepting their love as the pivot on which its own existence revolved, she would have seen her lover as an actuality only when they were making love. Out of her sight, he would have faded into the uncertain mists of another social grade, floated incorporeal among photographs of Ellis and Walery in a legend of wealth and dignity beyond her conception. To Fuz and Ronnie and Cunningham she could talk of Maurice, thereby gleaning external impressions which confirmed her own attitude. In this atmosphere her love assumed a sanity and normality that might otherwise easily have been lost.

It must not be supposed that this little republic was content with the territory of 422 Grosvenor Road. On the contrary, throughout October, November and December, there were frequent sallies against convention and raids upon Philistia. There were noisy tea-parties in hostile strongholds like the Corner House, where ladies were not permitted to smoke and customers were kindly requested to pay at the desk. Perhaps their most successful foray was upon a fashionable tea-shop in St. James's Street, where a florin was the minimum charge for tea to include everything; on this occasion, prepared for by rigorous fasting, it included a very great deal. There were attempts by Ronnie Walker to make the girls enjoy picture-galleries, by Cunningham to convert them to Symphony Concerts. And once they all went to see a play by Mr. Bernard Shaw. But painting, music and the drama could not compete with skating rinks, where elegant and accomplished instructors complained of their rowdiness. But, as Jenny said, "What of it? _We're_ enjoying ourselves, any old way."

The pinnacle of their gay ambition was a Covent Garden Ball. This entertainment had continually to be postponed for lack of funds; for, though a Covent Garden Ball has usually a sober, even a chilling effect upon the company, it has dare-devil pretensions which Maurice and his retinue would not exploit unless they were assured of a conspicuous success.

So the Second Empire Masquerade was planned and debated a long time before it actually happened. That it happened at all was due to the death of Maurice's great-aunt, who left him one hundred pounds. This legacy being unexpected, was obviously bound to be spent at once. As the legatee pointed out to Jenny one dripping afternoon in early January, as they sat together in the studio:

"It's practically like finding money in the road. I know that one day my stockbroker uncle will leave me two thousand pounds. He's told me so often to raise my spirits on wet week-ends at his house. I've planned what to do with that. Every farthing is booked. But this hundred I never thought of. I was beginning to despair of ever raising the cash for Covent Garden, and here it is all of a sudden."

"You're not going to spend a hundred pounds in one evening?" Jenny exclaimed.

"Not all of it, because you've got to buy yourself some furs and three hats and those silk stockings with peach-colored clocks--oh, yes, and I've got to buy you that necklace of fire opals which we saw in Wardour Street and also that marquise ring, and I've got to buy myself a safety razor and a box of pastels, and I simply must get Thackeray's _Lectures on the English Humorists_ for Fuz."

"There won't be much left of your hundred pounds," said Jenny.

"Well, let's draw up an estimate. I'll write down the possibles and then we'll delete nearly all of them."

Maurice got up from his chair and wandered round the room in search of note-paper. Not being able to find any, he pinned a large sheet of drawing-paper to a board and produced a pencil.

"Look at him," laughed Jenny. "Look at the Great Millionaire. Just because he's come into money, he can't write on anything smaller than a blanket."

"It's not ostentation," Maurice declared. "It's laziness--a privilege of the very poor, as you ought to know by this time. I can't find any note-paper."

"I should think you couldn't. I wonder you can find yourself in this room."

"Come along," urged the owner of it. "We must begin. Maurice and Jenny. Then Fuz and Maudie, Ronnie and Irene, Cunningham and Madge. Any more you can think of?"

"You don't mean to say you've taken that unnatural piece of paper just to write those few names which we could have thought of in our heads. What would you do with him?"

"We want another eight," Maurice declared.

"Oh, no, eight's plenty."

"Perhaps it is," he agreed. "Well, now, Maurice will be Theophile Gautier--no, he won't--the red waistcoat knocks him out--Edmond de Goncourt? No, he had a mustache. Chopin? Long hair. Look here, I don't think we'll be anybody in particular. We'll just be ladies and gentlemen of the period. You know you girls have got to wear crinolines and fichus and corkscrew curls."

"Like we used to wear in Boheme in the Opera?"

"That's it. You must see about your dresses at once. Good ones will cost about ten pounds to hire, and that ought to include some decent paste."

"We sha'n't have to pay for _our_ tickets."

"Good. Four guineas saved. Dresses? Say twenty pounds for the eight of us. Supper with fizz another ten quid. Four salmon-colored taxis with tips, ten pounds."

"How much?" Jenny exclaimed. "Ten pounds just to take us to Covent Garden Ball and back?"

"Ah, but I've a plan. These salmon-colored taxis are going to be the _chef d'oeuvre_ as well as the _hors d'oeuvre_ of the entertainment. Hush, it's a secret. Let me see, our tickets--four guineas--forty-four pounds four shillings. Well, say fifty quid to include all tips and breakfast."

"Well, I think it's too much," Jenny declared.

"Not too much for an evening that shall be famous over all evenings--an evening that you, my Jenny, will remember when you're an ancient old woman--an evening that we'll talk over for the rest of our lives."

While Maurice was speaking, the shadow of a gigantic doubt passed over Jenny's mind. She endured one of those moments when only the profound uselessness of everything has any power to impress the reason. She suffered a complete loss of faith and hope. The moment was one of those black abysses before which the mind is aghast at effort and conceives annihilation. In the Middle Ages such an experience would have been ascribed to the direct and personal influence of Satan.

"What's the matter?" Maurice asked. "You look as if you didn't believe me."

But, while the question was still on his lips, the shadow passed, and Jenny laughed.

The famous evening was finally assigned to the twenty-seventh of January. The four girls took their places in the ballet as usual and, meeting from time to time in evolutions, would murmur as they danced by, "To-night, what, what?" or "Don't you wish it was eleven?" They would look at each other, too, from opposite sides of the stage, smiling in the sympathy of anticipated pleasure. When the curtains fell they hurried to their dressing-rooms to exchange tights and spangles for mid-Victorian frocks, whose dainty lace made all the other girls very envious indeed. Some were so envious as to suggest to Jenny that another color would have suited her better than pink or that her hair would be more becoming _en chignon_ than curled. But Jenny was not deceived by such professions of amiable advice.

"Yes, some of you would like to see me with my hair done different. Some of you wouldn't be half pleased if I went out looking a sight. Oh, no, it's only a rumor. Thanks, I'm not taking any. I know what suits me better than _any_one, _which_ pink does."

"Don't take any notice of them," Maudie whispered to her friend.

"Take notice of them. What! Why, I should be all the time looking. My eyes would get as big as moons. They've been opened wide enough since I came to the Orient, as it is."

At last, having survived every criticism, the four girls were ready. The hall-porter's boy carried their luggage out to the salmon-colored taxis, whose drivers looked embarrassed by the salmon-colored carnations which Maurice insisted they should wear. The latter, with Fuz, Ronnie and Cunningham, stood in the entrance of the court, wrapped in full cloaks and wearing tall hats of a bygone fashion. They were leaning gracefully on their tasseled canes as the girls came along the court towards them. It was romantic to think that other girls in similar frocks had trod the same path and met men dressed like them fifty years ago. This sweet fancy was very vividly brought home to them when an old cleaner, grimed with half a century of Orient dust, passed by the laughing, chattering group, and, as she shuffled off towards Seven Dials, looked back over her shoulder with an expression of fear.

"Marie thinks we're ghosts," laughed Madge.

"Isn't it dreadful to think she was once in the ballet?" said Jenny. "Poor old crow, I do think it's dreadful."

The eight of them shivered at the thought.

"Really?" said Maurice. "How horrible."

The episode was a gaunt intrusion upon gayety; but it was soon forgotten in the noise and sheen of Piccadilly.

The taxis with much hooting hummed through the dazzling thoroughfares into the gloom and comparative stillness of Long Acre. As usual they tried to cut through Floral Street, only to be turned back by a policeman; but without much delay they swept at last under the great portico of the Opera House. Here many girls, blown into Covent Garden by the raw January winds, gave the effect of thistledown, so filmy were their dresses; and the rigid young men, stopping behind to pay their fares, looked stiff and awkward as groups of Pre-Raphaelite courtiers. Commissionaires decorated the steps without utility. In the vestibule merry people were greeting each other and nodding as they passed up and down the wide staircase. Here and there an isolated individual, buttoning and unbuttoning his gloves with unconscionable industry, gazed anxiously at every swing of the door. Presently Jenny and Madge and Maudie and Irene were ready and, as on the arms of their escort they took the floor of the ballroom, might have stepped from a notebook of Gavarni.

Covent Garden balls are distinguished by the atmosphere of a spectacle which pervades them. The floor itself has the character of an arena encircled by tiers of red boxes, many of which display marionettes, an unobtrusive audience, given over to fans and the tinkle of distant laughter; while the curtained glooms of others are haunted by invisible eyes. Here are no chaperons struggling with palms and hair-nets through a wearisome evening, creaking in wicker chairs and discussing draughts with neighbors. The old men, searching for bridge-players, are absent. There is neither host nor hostess; and not one anaemic young debutante is distressed by the bleakness of her unembarrassed programme.

Maurice announced that he had taken a box for the evening, so that his guests would be able, when tired of dancing, to cheat fatigue. Then he caught Jenny round the waist, and, regardless of their companions, the two of them were lost in the tide of dancers. They were only vaguely conscious of the swirl of petticoats and lisp of feet around their course. In the irresistible sweep of melodious violins all that really existed for Maurice and Jenny was nearness to each other, and eyes ablaze with rapture; and for him there was the silken coolness of her curls, for her the fever of his hand upon her waist.

During the interval between the sixth and seventh waltzes, Maurice, breathless at the memory of their perfect accord, said:

"I wonder if Paolo and Francesca enjoy swooning together on the winds of hell. Great Scott! as if one wouldn't prefer the seventh circle to bathing in pools of light with a blessed damosel. I'm surprised at Rosetti."

"Who's she?"

"The blessed damosel?"

"No--Rose Etty."

"Oh, Jenny, don't make me laugh."

"Well, I don't know what you're talking about."

"I was speculating. Hark! They're playing the Eton Boating Song. Come along. We mustn't miss a bar of it."

In the scent of frangipani and jicky and phulnana the familiar tune became queerly exotic. The melody, charged with regret for summer elms and the sounds of playing-fields, full of the vanished laughter of boyhood, held now the heart of romantic passion. It spoke of regret for the present rather than the past and, as it reveled in the lapse of moments, gave expression to the dazzling swiftness of such a night in a complaint for flying glances, sighs and happy words lost in their very utterance.

"Heart of hearts," whispered Maurice in the swirl of the dance.

"Oh, Maurice, I do love you," she sighed.

Now the moments fled faster as the beat quickened for the climax of the dance. Maurice held Jenny closer than before, sweeping her on through a mist of blurred lights in which her eyes stood out clear as jewels from the pallor of her face. Round the room they went, round and round, faster and faster. Jenny was now dead white. Her lips were parted slightly, her fingers strained at Maurice's sleeve. He, with flushed cheeks, wore elation all about him. No dream could have held the multitude of imaginations that thronged their minds; and when it seemed that life must end in the sharpness of an ecstasy that could never be recorded in mortality, the music stopped. There was a sound of many footsteps leaving the ballroom. Jenny leaned on Maurice's arm.

"You're tired," he said. "Jolly good dance that?"

"Wasn't it glorious? Oh, Maurice, it was lovely."

"Come and sit in the box when you've had some champagne, and I'll dance with the girls while you're resting. Shall I?"

She nodded.

Presently Maurice was tearing round the room with Maudie, both of them laughing very loudly, while Jenny sat back in a faded arm-chair thinking of the old Covent Garden days and nights, and wondering how she could ever have fancied she was happy before she met Maurice. In a few minutes Fuz came into the box to ask if she wanted to dance.

"No, I'm tired," she told him.

"It's just as well, perhaps," he said gravely. "For I am what you would describe as a very unnatural dancer."

"Oh, Fuz," she laughed; "are you? Oh, you must dance once round the room with me before it's over. Oh, you must. It tickles my fancy, the idea of Fuz dancing."

"At last I've earned a genuine laugh."

"Oh, Fuz, doesn't anyone else ever laugh at you, only me?"

"Very rarely."

"Shame!"

"So it is."

"Aren't Maurice and Maudie making a terrible noise?"

"They're certainly laughing loud enough," Fuz agreed. "But Maurice is always in spirits. I don't think he knows the meaning of depression."

"Doesn't he then!" Jenny exclaimed. "I think he gets _very_ depressed sometimes!"

"Not deeply. It's never more than a passing mood."

"That's quite right. It is a mood. But he works himself up into a state over his moods."

"Tell me, dear Jane," said Castleton suddenly. "No, on second thoughts, I won't ask."

"Oh, do tell me."

"No, it's not my business. Besides, you'd be annoyed, and I've no wish to make our Jenny angry."

"I won't be angry. Do tell me, Fuz, what you was going to ask."

"Well, I will," he said, after a pause. "Jenny, are you very fond of Maurice?"

"Oh, I love him."

"Really love him?"

"Of course."

"But you'd soon get over it if----"

"If what?"

"If Maurice was--was a disappointment--for instance, if he married somebody else quite suddenly? Don't look so frightened; he's not going to, as far as I know; or likely to, but if ... would it upset your life?"

Jenny burst into tears.

"My dearest Jane," Castleton cried, "I was only chaffing. Please don't cry. Jenny, Jenny, I'm only an inquisitive, speculative jackanapes. Maurice isn't going to do anything of the kind. Really. Besides, I thought--oh, Jane--I'm terribly ashamed of myself."

"Maurice said I shouldn't like you," Jenny sobbed. "And I don't. I hate you. Don't stay with me. Go out of the box. I'm going home. Where's Maurice? I want Maurice to come to me."

"He's dancing," said Castleton helplessly. "Jane, I'm an absolute beast. Jane, will you marry me and show your forgiving nature?"

"Don't go on teasing me," sobbed Jenny, louder than ever. "You're hateful. I hate you."

"No, but I mean it. Will you, Jenny? Really, I'm not joking. I'd marry you to-morrow."

Jenny's tears gradually turned to laughter, and at last she had to say:

"Oh, Fuz, you're hateful, but you are funny."

"It's a most extraordinary thing," he replied, "that the only person I don't want to laugh at me must do it. Jane!" He held out his hand. "Jane, are we pals again?"

"I suppose we've got to be," Jenny pouted.

"Good pals and jolly companions?"

"Oh, whoever was it said that to me once?" cried Jenny. "Years and years ago. Oh, whoever was it?"

"Years and years?" echoed Castleton, quizzing. "Who are you, ancient woman?"

"_Don't_ be silly. It was. Someone said it when I was a little girl. Oh, Fuz, I'd go raving mad to remember who it was."

"Well, anyway, I've said it now. And is it a bargain?"

"What?"

"You and I being pals?"

"Of course."

"Which means that when I'm in trouble, I go to Jane for advice, and when Jane's in trouble, she comes to Fuz. Shake hands on that."

Jenny, feeling very shy of him for the first time during their acquaintanceship, let him take her hand.

"And the tears are a secret?" he asked.

"Not if Maurice asks me. I'd have to tell him."

"Would you? All right, if he asks, tell him."

Maurice, however, did not ask, being full of arrangements for supper and in a quandary of taste between Pol Roger and Perrier Jouet.

"What about Perrier without Jouet?" Castleton suggested. "It would save money."

Supper (and in the end Maurice chose Pommery) was very jolly; but nothing for the lovers during the rest of the evening reached the height of those first waltzes together. After supper Fuz and Jenny danced a cake-walk, and Ronnie tried to hum a favorite tune to Cunningham in order that he could explain to the conductor what Ronnie wanted. Nothing came of it, however, as the latter never succeeded in disentangling it from two other tunes. So, with laughter and dancing, they kept the night merry to the last echo of music, and when at about half-past six they all stood in the vestibule waiting for the salmon-colored taxis to drive them home, all agreed that Maurice had done well.

"And I've not done yet," he said. "I suppose you all think you're going home to tumble sleepily into bed. Oh, no, we're going to have breakfast first at the old Sloop, Greenwich."

"Greenwich?" they repeated in chorus.

"I've ordered a thumping breakfast. The drive will do us good. We can see the dawn break over the river."

"And put our watches right," added Castleton.

"Then you girls can be driven home (your bags are all inside the taxis) and sleep all the rest of the morning and afternoon."

Maurice was so eager to carry this addendum that none of them had the heart to vote firmly for bed.

"I don't mind where we go," said Ronnie. "But why Greenwich in particular? We can see the dawn break over the river just as well at Westminster."

"Greenwich is in the manner," Maurice answered.

"What manner?"

"The crinoline manner. The Sloop is absolutely typically mid-Victorian and already twice as romantic as your crumbling Gothic or overworked Georgian."

So the taxis hummed off to Greenwich through the murk of a wet and windy January morning. Wagons were being unloaded in Covent Garden as they started; and along the Strand workers were already hurrying through the rain. It was still too dark to see the river as they spun over Waterloo Bridge, but the air blew in through the open windows very freshly. In the New Kent Road factory girls, shuffling to work, turned to shout after the four taxis; and Madge Wilson leaned out to wave to her mother's shop as they passed.

All the way Jenny slept in Maurice's arms, and he from time to time would bend over and kiss very lightly the sculptured mouth. In Deptford High Street the gray dawn was beginning to define the houses, and in a rift of the heavy clouds stars were paling.

Jenny woke up with a start.

"Where am I? Where am I?" Then, aware of Maurice, she nestled closer.

"You've been asleep, dearest. We're almost at Greenwich. It's practically morning now."

"I'm cold."

"Are you, my sweet? I thought this fur coat would keep you warm. It's yours, you know. I bought it for you to-day--yesterday, I mean."

"It's lovely and warm," she said, "but I'm so sleepy."

"You are so perfect when you're lying asleep," he said; "I must make a statue of you. I shall call it The Tired Dancer. I'll begin as soon as possible and finish it this spring."

"I wish spring would come quick," she murmured. "I'm sick of winter."

"So am I," he agreed. "And we shall have the most exquisite adventures in the spring. We'll go out often into the country. Long country walks will do you good."

"Rather."

"Hullo!" cried Maurice. "Here we are at the Sloop. I hope breakfast is ready."

There was, however, no sign of life in the hotel by the water's side. It stared at them without any welcome.

"What an extraordinary thing," said Maurice. "I'll ring the bell. Great Scott! I never posted the letter telling them about breakfast."

"What would you do with him?" said Madge.

"Never mind. It's absurd to keep us waiting like this. We can surely get breakfast." He pealed the bell loudly as he spoke.

"Can't you get in, sir?" asked one of the drivers.

"And it's coming on to rain," said Jenny.

Maurice pealed the bell louder than ever; and finally a sad-eyed porter in shirt-sleeves opened the door and surveyed the party over a broom.

"We want breakfast," said Maurice; "breakfast for eight."

"Breakfast always is at eight," the man informed them.

"Breakfast for eight people and as quickly as possible."

The man looked doubtful.

"Good heavens!" Maurice cried irritably. "Surely in any decent hotel you can get breakfast for eight."

"What are you?" the man asked. "Theatricals?"

"No, no, no, we've been to a fancy dress ball--and we want breakfast."

In the end they were admitted, and, a chamber-maid having been discovered on a remote landing, the girls were shown into a bedroom.

"I thought this hotel professed to cater for excursions of pleasure," said Maurice frigidly.

"We don't get many of 'em here in winter."

"I'm not surprised. Good Lord, isn't the fire lighted in the coffee-room?"

"We don't use the coffee-room much--except for political meetings. Greenwich has gone out from what it used to be."

The girls came in, pale and tired, and the party foregathered round the coffee-room grate, from which a wisp of smoke ascended in steady promise.

"Well, Maurice," said Castleton, "I think very little of this ravished conservatory into which your historic sense has led us. How do you like Greenwich, girls?"

The girls all sighed.

"They don't."

"Hullo, here's a waiter," said Cunningham, turning round. "Good morning, waiter."

"Good morning, sir."

"Is breakfast going to be long?"

"It's on order sir. Eggs and bacon, I think you said."

"I should think somebody probably did. In fact, I'd almost bet on it," said Castleton. "What's the time, waiter?"

"I don't know, sir, but I'll find out for you."

"I always thought Greenwich was famous for its time."

"Whitebait, sir, more than anything."

Castleton sighed; and Maurice, who had gone downstairs to reassure the household, came back trying to look as if waiting for breakfast on a January morning after dancing all night was one of the jolliest experiences attainable by humanity.

"Maurice," said Ronnie Walker, "we think your night was splendid. But we think your morning is rotten."

"Oh, Maurice, why didn't you let us go to bed?" Jenny grumbled.

"You can't really blame the hotel people," Maurice began.

"We don't," interrupted Cunningham severely. "We blame you."

"I also blame myself," said Ronnie, "for giving way to your mad schemes."

"You're right," Jenny put in. "I think we was all mad. What must they have thought of us--a party of loonies, I should say."

"I meant it to be very charming," Maurice urged in apology.

"Oh, well, it'll all come out in the wash, but I wish they'd bring in this unnatural breakfast."

The company sighed in unison, and, as if encouraged by such an utterance of breath, the wisp of smoke broke into a thin blue flame.

"Come, that's better," said Maurice, unduly encouraged. "The fire's burning up quite cheerfully."

This and the entrance of breakfast revived everybody, and when a genuine blaze crackled in the grate they thought Greenwich was not so bad after all; though Maurice could not persuade anybody to stand by the bleak windows flecked with raindrops and watch the big ships going out on the ebb.

"But what shall we do?" Jenny demanded. "I can't go home after the milk. I shall get into a most shocking row."

"You can explain matters," Cunningham suggested.

"Yes, I should say. Who'd believe we should be so mad as to rush off to Greenwich on a pouring morning for breakfast? No, I must say I slept with Ireen."

"Well, why don't you come back and go to bed at my place?" Irene suggested. "You can go home tea-time."

"All right. I will."

Maudie and Madge decided to copy the example of the other two, by going back together to Mrs. Wilson's house near the Elephant and Castle.

"Only we ought to change our clothes first," Jenny said. "What of it though? We've got cloaks."

"I shouldn't mind changing," said Castleton. "These claret-colored overalls of mine will inevitably attract the public vision."

"Rot!" said Maurice. "We can all drive down to the Elephant--although, by the way, we ought to stop at the Marquis of Granby and look at the Museum."

"To the deuce with all museums," cried Ronnie. "I want my bed."

"You are an unsporting lot," Maurice protested. "Then we'll stop at the 'Elephant,' and the girls can go home in two taxis and we'll go back in the others."

So it was arranged; and, having paid the bill and politely assented to the waiter's suggestion that they should come over in the summer-time to a whitebait dinner, they left behind them the Sloop Hotel, Greenwich.

On the way back to London, Maurice attempted to point out to Jenny the foolishness of her present style of living.

"All this fuss about whether you go home before or after the milk. I can't understand why you let yourself be a slave to a family. I really can't."

"But I'm not," said Jenny indignantly. "Only that doesn't say I'm going to live with you, if that's what you mean."

Somehow the wet and dreary morning gave a certain crudity of outline to the situation, destroying romantic enchantments and accentuating the plain and ugly facts.

"You'd be ever so much happier if you did."

"Oh, well, who cares?"

"I wish you wouldn't say that."

"Well, what an unnatural time to talk about where I'm going to live and what I'm going to do."

"It's extraordinary," said Maurice, "how much you're influenced by the unimportant little things of life. I'm as much in love with you now as I was last night when we were waltzing. You're not."

"I don't love anything now except bed."

"Yet I'm just as tired as you are."

"Who cares?"

"Damn it. Don't go on saying that. I can't think where you got hold of that infernal expression."

"You are in a nasty mood," said Jenny sullenly.

"So are you."

"Well, why did you drag me out all this way in the early morning?"

"I wanted you to enjoy yourself. I wanted to round off a glorious evening."

"I think a jolly good sleep rounds off a glorious evening, or anything else, best of all."

"I think you sleep too much," argued Maurice, who was so tired himself that he felt bound to contest futilely every point of the discussion.

"Well, I don't. That's where you and me don't agree."

"You're always sleeping."

"Well, if I like it, it needn't trouble you."

"Nothing troubles me," Maurice answered with much austerity. "Only I wish to goodness you'd behave reasonably. Look here, you're an artistic person. You earn your living by dancing. You don't want to take up with a lot of old women's notions of morality. If you reject an experience, you'll suffer for it. Chance only offers you Life--I mean Life only offers you Chance----" But it did not matter much what he meant, for by now Jenny was fast asleep.