2o6 A MODERN COMEDY
tude. And what was worse, she could see herself seeing
it—a triple-distilled modern, so subtly arranged in life-tight
compartments that she could not be submerged. If only
something would blow in out of the unkempt cold, out of
the waste and wilderness of a London whose flowers she
plucked. The firelight—soft, uncertain—searched out
spots and corners of her Chinese room, as on a stage in one
of those scenes, seductive and mysterious, where one
waited, to the sound of tambourines, for the next moment
of the plot. She reached out and took a cigarette. She
could sec herself lighting it, blowing out the smoke—her
own half-curled fingers, her parted lips, her white rounded
arm. She was decorative 1 Well, and wasn't that all that
mattered ? To be decorative, and make little decorations ;
to be pretty in a world that wasn't pretty ! In 6 Copper
Coin ' there was a poem of a flicker-lit room, and a spoiled
Columbine before the fire, <md a Harlequin hovering
without, like ' the spectre of the rose/ And suddenly,
without warning, Fleur's heart ached. It ached definitely,
rather horribly, and, slipping down on to the floor before
the fire, she snuggled her face against Ting-n-ling. The
Chinese dog raised his head—his black eyes lurid in the
glow.
He licked her cheek, and turned his nose away. Huf !
Powder ! But Fleur lay like the dead. And she saw her-
self lying—the curve of her hip, the chestnut glow in her
short hair ; she heard the steady beat of her heart. Get
up ! Go out! Do something ! But what—what was
worth doing ? What had any meaning in it ? She saw
herself doing—extravagant things ; nursing sick women ;
tending pale babies ; making a speech in Parliament;
riding a steeplechase ; hoeing turnips in knickerbockers—
decorative. And she lay perfectly still, bound by the
filaments of her self-vision. So long as she saw herself si e