“Well,” he said, having delivered his message, “cheerio. I’m going to Datchet for a week to stay on the Mullets’ houseboat.”
Georgie looked round at him, stirred to a slight curiosity.
“Yes. War profiteers. Rolling in the stuff. Great fun. Know everybody. Champagne and diamonds for breakfast. Haven’t got a loose fiver about you, I suppose?”
With a faint smile Georgie pointed to her cigarette case on the dressing table. And without a qualm Malwood opened it, removed his wife’s last night’s bridge winnings, murmured, “Thanks most awfully,” and barged out, whistling a tune from “The League of Notions.”
“All right, then. For the last time, lunch with Feo,” thought Georgie, moving from the window seat lazily. “She’s over.”
For the first time since Feo had lifted Georgie Malwood into her intimacy, in that half-careless, half-cautious way that belongs usually to the illegitimate offspring of kings, her small, unemotional friend was late for her appointment. Always before, like every other member of the gang, Georgie Malwood had reported on the early side of the prescribed moment and killed time without impatience until it had occurred to Feo to put in an appearance. That morning, which was without word from Arrowsmith, as she had predicted with the uncanny intuition that makes women suffer before as well as after they are hurt, Feo was punctual. She entered her den with the expectation of finding Georgie curled up on the sofa, halfway through a slim volume of new poems. The room was empty and there had been no message of apology, no hastily scribbled note of endearment and explanation.
During the longest forty-five minutes that she had ever spent, Feo passed from astonishment to anger and finally into the chilly realization that her uncharacteristic behavior of the last few weeks had been discussed and criticized, and that the judgment of her friends was unmistakably reflected in the new attitude of the hitherto faithful and obsequious Georgie,—always the first to catch the color of her surroundings. She, Feo, the Queen of Flippancy, the ringleader of eroticism, had had the temerity to play serious, an unforgivable crime in the estimation of the decadent set which had ignored the War and emerged triumphantly into the chaos of peace. Well, there it was. A long and successful innings was ended. She would be glad to withdraw from the field.