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 breast, for him to see. But Ellen wasn't giving him a chance to notice anyone but herself. "Nick! Nick!" she called him back, whenever his attention wandered. Didn't she realize how tiresome that became to a man?

Christabel was conscious of the two of them through everything; through talking to her beautiful East Indian with his white turban, gold clothes, and dark purple mantle edged with a tracery of dark dim gold; or to her Irish poet; through noticing that Gobby, as usual, wasn't knowing when to stop on the salted nuts; through avoiding Elliott's meaning glances—idiot!—through saying, "Movies, saxophones, and bright magenta, seem to me perhaps the only real things in a shadowy world," and hearing the expected, "What was that she said?" Something was making Ellen look radiant tonight—the blue gown, or, possibly, love. But certainly she was making a fool of herself, languishing all over him, gazing at him, obviously adoring. And he is graciously allowing himself to be adored, Chris-