Impossible! Then, immediately he laughed.
Why impossible?
And why should he bother his head about it?
People of this sort: Mademoiselle Cerise, Madame Juliette, Mademoiselle Victorine--what were they to him, or to themselves?
There flashed through his brain three pictures: when he stood by the bedside of the old dying Esquimaux in Labrador, and took a girl's hand in his; when among the flowers at Peppingham he heard Delia say: "Oh, Gaston! Gaston!" and Alice's face at midnight in the moonlit window at Ridley Court.
How strange this figure--spangled, gaudy, standing among her lions--seemed by these.

To think of her, his veins thumping thus, was an insult to all three: to Delia, one unpardonable.

And yet he could not take his eyes off her.

Her performance was splendid.

He was interested, speculative.