“Marthe!” she called, when she had let herself into the flat.  Contrary to orders, the little hall was in darkness.  There was no answer.  She lit the hall and passed into the kitchen, lighting it also.  There, in the terrible and incurable squalor of Marthe’s own kitchen, Marthe’s apron was thrown untidily across the back of the solitary windsor chair.  She knew then that Marthe had gone out, and in truth, although very annoyed, she was not altogether surprised.

Marthe had a mysterious love affair.  It was astonishing, in view of the intensely aphrodisiacal atmosphere in which she lived, that Marthe did not continually have love affairs.  But the day of love had seemed for Marthe to be over, and Christine found great difficulty in getting her ever to leave the flat, save on necessary household errands.  On the other hand it was astonishing that any man should be attracted by the fat slattern.  The moth now fluttering round her was an Italian waiter, as to whom Christine had learnt that he was being unjustly hunted by the Italian military authorities.  Hence the mystery necessarily attaching to the love affair.  Being French, Christine despised him.  He called Marthe by her right name of “Marta,” and Christine had more than once heard the pair gabbling in the kitchen in Italian.  Just as though she had been a conventional bourgeoise Christine now accused Marthe of ingratitude because the woman was subordinating Christine’s convenience to the supreme exigencies of fate.  A man’s freedom might be in the balance, Marthe’s future might be in the balance; but supposing that Christine had come home with a gallant—­and no femme de chambre to do service!

She walked about the flat, shut the windows, drew the blinds, removed her hat, removed her gloves, stretched them, put her things away; she gazed at the two principal rooms, at the soiled numbers of La Vie Parisienne and the cracked bric-a-brac in the drawing-room, at the rent in the lace bedcover, and the foul mess of toilet apparatus in the bedroom.  The forlorn emptiness of the place appalled her.  She had been quite fairly successful in her London career.  Hundreds of men had caressed her and paid her with compliments and sweets and money.  She had been really admired.  The flat had had gay hours.  Unmistakable aristocrats had yielded to her.  And she had escaped the five scourges of her profession....

It was all over.  The chapter was closed.  She saw nothing in front of her but decline and ruin.  She had escaped the five scourges of her profession, but part of the price of this immunity was that through keeping herself to herself she had not a friend.  Despite her profession, and because of the prudence with which she exercised it, she was a solitary, a recluse.

Yes, of course she had Gilbert.  She could count upon Gilbert to a certain extent, to a considerable extent; but he would not be eternal, and his fancy for her would not be eternal.  Once, before Easter, she had had the idea that he meant to suggest to her an exclusive liaison.  Foolish!  Nothing, less than nothing, had come of it.  He would not be such an imbecile as to suggest such a thing to her.  Miracles did not happen, at any rate not that kind of miracle.