The Paliser case. Saltus Edgar

bothered because they were too obvious and also because she was sure that Cassy was not insane.

      Paliser abandoned his cigarette. "If you like, we might look in at the Metropolitan. I believe I have a box."

      Apart from down-stage and the centre of it, apart, too, from the flys and the dressing-rooms, Cassy's imagination had not as yet conceived anything more beckoning than a box at the opera, even though, as on this occasion, the opera happened to be a concert. "Why, yes. Only – " Pausing, she looked about. The imperial lady had gone.

      "Only what?" Paliser very needlessly asked for he knew.

      "I fear I am a bit overdressed."

      "Not for Sunday. The house will be full and nobody in it. Besides, what do you care?"

      Cassy shrugged. "Personally, not a rap. It was of you I was thinking."

      Paliser, who had been signing the check and feeing the waiter, looked at her. "I did not know that you were so considerate."

      Cassy, in surprise not at him, but at herself, laughed. "Nor did I."

      Paliser stood up and drew back her chair. "Be careful. You might become cynical. It is in thinking of others that cynicism begins."

      The platitude slipped from him absently. He had no wish for the concert, no wish to hear Berlinese trulls and bubonic bassi bleat. But, for the tolerably delicate enterprise that he had in hand, there were the preliminary steps which could only be hastened slowly and anything slower than the Metropolitan on a Sunday night, it was beyond him to conjecture.

      But though on that evening a basso did bleat, it may be that he was not bubonic. Moreover he was followed by a soprano who, whether trullish or not, at any rate was not Berlinese and whose voice had the lusciousness of a Hawaiian pineapple. But the selections, which were derived from old Italian cupboards, displeased Paliser, who called them painted mush.

      But not twice! Cassy turned her back on him. The painted mush shook stars in her ears, opened vistas on the beyond. Save for him she would have been quite happy. But his remark annoyed her. It caused her to revise her opinion. Instead of an inoffensive insect he was an offensive fool. None the less, as the concert progressed, she revised it again. On entering the box she had seen his name on the door. The memory of that, filtering through the tinted polenta from the ancient cupboards, softened her. A man so gifted could express all the imbecilities he liked. Elle s'enfichait.

      As a result, before it was over, in lieu of her back, she gave him the seduction of her smile, and, later when, in his car, on the way to the walk-up, he spoke of future dinners, fresher songs, she had so far forgotten the painted mush insult, that momentarily she foresaw but one objection. She had nothing to wear and frankly, with entire unconcern, she out with it.

      For that he had a solution which he kept to himself. The promptly obliterating stare with which she would have reduced him to non-existence, he dodged in advance.

      Apparently changing the subject, he said: "You know – or know of – Mrs. Beamish, don't you?"

      "Never heard of her," said Cassy, entirely unaware that no one else ever had either.

      "She was at the Bazaar the other night and admired your singing."

      "Very good of her I am sure," replied Cassy, who, a born anarchist and by the same token a born autocrat, loathed condescension.

      Paliser corrected it. "No, not good – appreciative. She wants you to sing at her house. If you are willing, could she arrange about it through Madame Tamburini?"

      "If she tried very hard, I suppose she might," Cassy, with the same loftiness, answered.

      But the loftiness was as unreal as Mrs. Beamish. Inwardly she jubilated, wondering how much she would get. A hundred? In that case she could repay Lennox at once. At the thought of it, again she revised her opinion. Paliser was young and in her judgment all young men were insects. On the other hand he was serviceable. Moreover, though he looked cocky, he did not presume. He talked rot, but he did not argue. Then, too, his car was a relief.