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dear. What’s the story?”
    “Bloody treachery’s the story. Shut up. I don’t want to tell you. My God, what friends I’ve got! My God, what friends!”
    She strode about the room and made sounds of outrage and defeat. She flung herself on the bed and pummelled it.
    Florence said, “You know what’ll be the end of this — party and all.”
    Miss Bellamy burst into tears. “I haven’t,” she sobbed, “a friend in the world. Not in the whole wide world. Except Dicky.”
    A spasm of something that might have been chagrin twitched at Florence’s mouth. ’’Him!” she said under her breath.
    Miss Bellamy abandoned herself to a passion of tears. Florence went into the bathroom and returned with sal volatile.
    “Here,” she said. “Try this. Come along now, dear.”
    “I don’t want that muck. Give me one of my tablets.”
    “Not now.”
    “Now!”
    “You know as well as I do, the doctor said only at night.”
    “I don’t care what he said. Get me one.”
    She turned her head and looked up at Florence. “Did you hear what I said?”
    “There aren’t any left. I was going to send out.”
    Miss Bellamy said through her teeth, “I’ve had enough of this. You think you can call the tune here, don’t you? You think you’re indispensable. You never made a bigger mistake. You’re not indispensable and the sooner you realize it, the better for you. Now, get out.”
    “You don’t mean that.”
    “Get out!”
    Florence stood quite still for perhaps ten seconds and then left the room.
    Miss Bellamy stayed where she was. Her temperament, bereft of an audience, gradually subsided. Presently she went to her dressing-table, dealt with her face and gave herself three generous shots from her scent-spray. At the fourth, it petered out. The bottle was empty. She made an exasperated sound, stared at herself in the glass and for the first time since the onset of her rage, began to think collectedly.
    At half-past twelve she went down to call on Octavius Browne and Anelida Lee.
    Her motives in taking this action were mixed. In the first place her temperament, having followed the classic pattern of diminishing returns, had finally worked itself out and had left her restless. She was unwilling to stay indoors. In the second, she wanted very badly to prove to herself how grossly she had been misjudged by Pinky and Bertie, and could this be better achieved than by performing an act of gracious consideration towards Richard? In the third place, she was burningly anxious to set her curiosity at rest in the matter of Anelida Lee.
    On her way down she looked in at the drawing-room. Bertie, evidently, had finished the flowers and gone. Pinky had left a note saying she was sorry if she’d been too upsetting but not really hauling down her flag an inch. Miss Bellamy blew off steam to Charles, Richard and Warrender without paying much attention to their reactions. They withdrew, dismayed, to Charles’s study from whence came the muted sound of intermittent conversation. Superbly dressed and gloved she let herself out and after pausing effectively for a moment in the sunshine, turned into the Pegasus.
    Octavius was not in the shop. Anelida, having completed her cleaning, had a smudge across her cheek and grubby hands. She had cried a little after Richard went out in a huff and there had been no time to repair the damage. She was not looking her best.
    Miss Bellamy was infinitely relieved.
    She was charming to Anelida. Her husband and Richard Dakers, she said, had talked so much about the shop: it was so handy for them, funny old bookworms that they were, to have found one practically on the doorstep. She understood that Anelida was hoping to go on the stage. Anelida replied that she was working at the Bonaventure. With every appearance of infinite generosity Miss Bellamy said that, unlike, most of her friends, she thought the little experimental club theatres performed a very useful function in showing plays that otherwise