V
Dickie went sound asleep in the car with her head against Pat’s inhospitable shoulder. When they got to her hotel she wriggled and stretched. “Is it … is it time to get up?” she murmured.
Next came Valérie Seymour and Jeanne Maurel to be dropped at the flat on the Quai Voltaire; then Pat who lived a few streets away, and last but not least the drunken Wanda. Stephen had to lift her out of the car and then get her upstairs as best she could, assisted by Burton and followed by Mary. It took quite a long time, and arrived at the door, Stephen must hunt for a missing latchkey.
When they finally got home, Stephen sank into a chair. “Good Lord, what a night—it was pretty awful.” She was filled with the deep depression and disgust that are apt to result from such excursions.
But Mary pretended to a callousness that in truth she was very far from feeling, for life had not yet dulled her finer instincts; so far it had only aroused her anger. She yawned. “Well, at least we could dance together without being thought freaks; there was something in that. Beggars can’t be choosers in this world, Stephen!”