self-consciously, and the wide-open eyes were fixed with an engaging
steadfastness on the figure in front of him as though he knew that if he
looked to the right or left he would give himself away altogether.
Stonehouse could almost hear his voice, high-pitched and boyish.

"Oh, I say, Robert, isn't it wonderful--isn't she splendid?"

Stonehouse himself stood right across their path. It was accidental, and
now he could not move. He had grown to rely too much on his emotional
inaccessibility, and the violence and suddenness of his anger transfixed
him. This woman had trapped Cosgrave. She had caught him in the
dangerous moment of convalescence--in that rebound from inertia which
carries men to an excess incredible to their normal conscience. And she
was infamous. She had broken one man after another.

She could not have overlooked Stonehouse. Apart from his conspicuous
clothes, his immobility and white-set face must have inevitably drawn her
attention to him. Her eyes, very blue and shadowless, met his stare with
a kind of bonhomie--almost a Masonic understanding--and the
uncompromising antagonism that replied seemed to check her. She
hesitated, then as he at last stood back, passed on still smiling, but
mechanically, as though something had surprised her into forgetting why
she smiled.

Cosgrave followed her. He brushed against Stonehouse without recognition.


In that moment Stonehouse's anger ran away with him. Thrusting aside the
protests of a puzzled and rather frightened waiter he chose a table that
faced them both. Cosgrave, blindly absorbed, never looked towards him,