The whole business had got an unnatural hold
over him. He half got up to go, and then realized that he was trying
to escape.
It was jolly music too. That at any rate her producers had toiled at
with some zeal. Incredibly stupid and artless and jolly. Anyone could
have danced to it. And she was a gutter-urchin, flinging herself about
in the sheer joy of life (with death capering at her heels). He
watched her, leaning forward, waiting for some sign, the faltering
gesture, a twitching grimace of realization. Or was it possible that
she was too empty-hearted to feel even her own tragedy, too shallow to
suffer, too stupid to foresee? At least he knew with certainty that in
that heated, exhausted atmosphere pain had set in.
He became aware that the sweat of it was on his own face--that he
himself was labouring under an intolerable physical burden. He knew
too much. (If God had His amusing moments he had also to suffer,
unless, as Mr. Ricardo had judged, he was a devil.) She was facing
what every man and woman in that theatre would have to face sooner or
later. How? She at any rate danced as though there were nothing in
the world but life. With each act her gestures, her very dress became
the clearer expression of an insatiable, uncurbed lust of living. At
the end, the orchestra, as though it could not help itself, broke into
the old doggerel tune that had helped to make her famous:
"I'm Gyp Labelle."
She waltzed and somersaulted round the stage, and as the curtain fell
she stood before the footlights, panting, her thin arms raised
triumphantly.
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