to the piano, touching Cosgrave lightly on the shoulder as she passed
him.

"Come, my latest best-beloved, we 'ave to amuse ze company. We sing
our leetle song together."

But first she made a deep low bow to the shadowy theatre. She kissed
her fingers to the empty boxes that stared down at her with hollow,
mournful eyes. (Were there ghosts there too, Stonehouse wondered
bitterly? The unlucky Frederick, perhaps, with the fatal hole gaping
above the temple, applauding, leaning towards her!)

She sang worse than usual. She was hoarse, and what voice she had gave
way altogether. It did not seem to matter either to her or to anyone
else. What she could not sing she danced. There was a chorus and they
joined in filling the gloom behind them with sullen, ironic echoes.
She reduced them all, Stonehouse thought, to the cabaret from which she
sprang.

And it was comic to see Cosgrave with his head thrown back, playing the
common, noisy stuff as though inspired.

When it was over he swung round, gaping at them with drunken,
confidential earnestness.

"You know, when I was a kid I used to see myself--on a stage like
this--playing the Moonlight Sonata."

She rumpled up his thick hair so that it stood on end like Loga's names.