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young woman with lovely metallic hair, almost green in the
deck lights, who had been sitting on the other side of Tom-
my and might have been part either of their conversation or
of the one next to them. She had obviously had a monopo-
ly of Tommy, for now she abandoned hope of his attention
with what was once called ill grace, and petulantly crossed
the crescent of the deck.
‘After all, I am a hero,’ Tommy said calmly, only half jok-
ing. ‘I have ferocious courage, US-ually, something like a
lion, something like a drunken man.’
Nicole waited until the echo of his boast had died away
in his mind—she knew he had probably never made such a
statement before. Then she looked among the strangers, and
found as usual, the fierce neurotics, pretending calm, liking
the country only in horror of the city, of the sound of their
own voices which had set the tone and pitch... . She asked:
‘Who is the woman in white?’
‘The one who was beside me? Lady Caroline Sibly-
Biers.’—They listened for a moment to her voice across the
way:
‘The man’s a scoundrel, but he’s a cat of the stripe. We
sat up all night playing two-handed chemin-de-fer, and he
owes me a mille Swiss.’
Tommy laughed and said: ‘She is now the wickedest
woman in London— whenever I come back to Europe there
is a new crop of the wickedest women from London. She’s
the very latest—though I believe there is now one other
who’s considered almost as wicked.’
Nicole glanced again at the woman across the deck—she

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