Page:The Happy Hypocrite - Beerbohm - 1897.pdf/34

 bowed his customer out.

When he reached the street, Lord George nearly uttered a curse through those sainted lips of his. For there, right in his way, stood La Gambogi, with a small, pink parasol. She laid her hand upon his sleeve and called him softly by his name. He passed her by without a word. Again she confronted him.

“I cannot let go so handsome a lover,” she laughed, “even though he spurn me! Do not spurn me, George. Give me your posy of wild flowers. Why, you never looked so lovingly at me in all your life!”

“Madam,” said Lord George, sternly, “I have not the honour to know you.” And he passed on.

The lady gazed after her lost lover with the blackest hatred in her eyes. Presently she beckoned across the road to a certain spy.

And the spy followed him.

Lord George, greatly agitated, had turned into Piccadilly. It was horrible to have met this garish embodiment of his past on the very threshold of his fair future. The mask-maker’s elevating talk about the gods, followed by the initiative ceremony of his saintly mask, had driven