Тринадцать гостей / Thirteen Guests

Beneath their trivial words they are telling him all the while that they like him or dislike him, love him or loathe him. The personal equation is all that lives behind their conversation.

“Have a cigarette, and don’t worry,” said Nadine. She produced a tiny gold case and held it out to him. “Forgive their idiotic size.”

She struck a match. As the light flickered on her features, their perfection almost hurt him. Of course, it was beauty-parlour perfection. Therefore, not really perfection at all. He held on to that thought while he advanced his head to the light.

She blew the match out as soon as he had used it, then struck another and lit her own cigarette from a greater distance.

They smoked for a few moments in silence. He had an agonising sensation that valuable seconds were slipping away, dropping irreclaimably into the void of time. Suddenly she raised her head.

“Yes,—I remember—one can just hear the music from this room,” she exclaimed. “Has it tantalised you, as it tantalised me when I was lying on that couch two years ago?”

“I’m not a great dancer,” he answered, “but I like it.

”

“You’re cut out for the diplomatic service,” she smiled, “you answer questions so tactfully! I could hardly lie still! There were better dancers that time than this. Apart from Mr. Taverley—and even he trod on my foot once”—She advanced a shoe and regarded the gold-sandalled toe—“there’s not a good dancer here. Well, Lord Aveling’s not bad—but the rest! Sir James dances with a sort of pompous caution.

Mr. Pratt seems to have the one object of preventing you from knowing what steps he’s going to do next. I can usually follow anybody, but he beats me. I’m sure it’s on purpose. Of course, his bosom companion, Mr. Bultin, doesn’t dance at all. Or, if he does, he won’t. He just watches with a kind of insulting boredom. So I escaped him. Also Mr. Rowe. But Mr. Chater—oh, my God! We almost came to blows!”

“How does Mr.

Chater dance?” inquired John, feeling that all this conversation was mere prelude. “I can’t imagine him dancing attractively.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re right, anyway. He—how can one describe it?—he seems to press, and yet he doesn’t. I think it’s because he is pressing with his mind. He was asking questions—quite quietly and casually—all the time we danced.” She laughed. “He even asked a question about us.