They
had no sense of dependence; they were not dependents, for they
gave more than value received. Yet so corrupting is the
atmosphere about rich people that Gourdain, who had other rich
clients, no less than Clelie who got her whole living from
Palmer, was at a glance in the flea class and not in the dog
class. Brent looked for signs of the same thing in Susan's
face. The signs should have been there; but they were not.
"Not yet," thought he. "And never will be now."
Palmer's abstraction and constraint were in sharp contrast to
the gayety of the others. Susan drank almost nothing. Her
spirits were soaring so high that she did not dare stimulate
them with champagne. The Cafe de Paris is one of the places
where the respectable go to watch _les autres_ and to catch a
real gayety by contagion of a gayety that is mechanical and
altogether as unreal as play-acting. There is something
fantastic about the official temples of Venus; the
pleasure-makers are so serious under their masks and the
pleasure-getters so quaintly dazzled and deluded. That is,
Venus's temples are like those of so many other religions in
reverence among men--disbelief and solemn humbuggery at the
altar; belief that would rather die than be undeceived, in the
pews. Palmer scarcely took his eyes from Susan's face. It
amused and pleased her to see how uneasy this made Brent--and
how her own laughter and jests aggravated his uneasiness to
the point where he was almost showing it.
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