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 You've been wonderful, Vera. It isn't that you haven't, he lied. God! This was worse than Amy!

Let me be wonderful to you—let me go on being, I mean. It makes me happy, Paul. I shall never be happy again if you go to work.

I'm sorry, Vera. The band was playing What'll I Do? to accompany the evolutions of the seals, but it sounded like incidental music for this conversation.

If you really loved me, you'd be content to let me support you. You don't love me any more. Vera was weeping, softly at first, but Paul was acquainted with her capacity for making a noise as soon as she truly began to enjoy her grief.

Of course, I do, he countered distractedly, and he was grateful at this moment to observe the name of Nora Bayes flash in the announcement frame. Vera chose the instant when the self-confident performer, screened by a preposterously enormous fan of orange feathers, undulated in the direction of the footlights to permit a sob of anguish to escape. As Paul had anticipated, however, this cry was drowned out by the power of sound expelled from the stage. The scene was further interrupted by the arrival of Campaspe and Consuelo. The former took in the situation at once, understood it, and ignored it, seating herself in the place reserved for her and, with a wave of the hand, inviting Consuelo to follow her example. The child was bundled in a cloak of white fox on which she had fastened a spray of brown and