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a maid whose appearance was more suitable to their position, and he had tried to persuade Evie that the work was too much for her, but Evie would not hear of it.

"You can say what you like, Mr. Gosselyn, but no one's going to maid Miss Lambert as long as I've got me 'ealth and strength."

"We're all getting on, you know, Evie. We're not so young as we were."

Evie drew her forefinger across the base of her nostrils and sniffed.

"As long as Miss Lambert's young enough to play women of twenty-five, I'm young enough to dress 'er. And maid 'er." Evie gave him a sharp look. "An' what d'you want to pay two lots of wages for, when you can get the work done for one?"

Michael chuckled in his good-humoured way.

"There's something in that, Evie dear."

She bustled Julia upstairs. When she had no matinee Julia went to bed for a couple of hours in the afternoon and then had a light massage. She undressed now and slipped between the sheets.

"Damn, my hot water bottle's nearly stone cold."

She looked at the clock on the chimney-piece. It was no wonder. It must have been there an hour. She had no notion that she had stayed so long in Michael's room, looking at those photographs and idly thinking of the past.

"Forty-six. Forty-six. Forty-six. I shall retire when I'm sixty. At fifty-eight South Africa and Australia. Michael says we can clean up there. Twenty thousand pounds. I can play all my old parts. Of course even at sixty I could play women of forty-five. But what about parts? Those bloody dramatists."

Trying to remember any plays in which there was a first-rate part for a woman of five-and-forty she fell asleep. She slept soundly till Evie came to awake her because the masseuse was there. Evie brought her the evening paper, and Julia, stripped, while the masseuse rubbed her long slim legs and her belly, putting on her spectacles, read the same theatrical intelligence she had read that morning, the gossip column and the woman's page. Presently Michael came in and sat on her bed. He often came at that hour to have a little chat with her.

"Well, what was his name?" asked Julia.

"Whose name?"

"The boy who came to lunch?"

"I haven't a notion. I drove him back to the theatre. I never gave him another thought."

Miss Phillips, the masseuse, liked Michael. You knew where you were with him. He always said the same things and you knew exactly what to answer. No side to him. And terribly good-looking. My word.

"Well, Miss Phillips, fat coming off nicely?"

"Oh, Mr. Gosselyn, there's not an ounce of fat on Miss Lambert. I think it's wonderful the way she keeps her figure."

"Pity I can't have you to massage me, Miss Phillips. You might be able to do something about mine."

"How you talk, Mr. Gosselyn. Why, you've got the figure of a boy of twenty. I dont' know how you do it, upon my word I don't."

"Plain living and high thinking, Miss Phillips."

Julia was paying no attention to what they said but Miss Phillips's reply reached her.

"Of course there's nothing like massage, I always say that, but you've got to be careful of your diet. That there's no doubt about at all."

"Diet!" she thought. "When I'm sixty I shall let myself go. I shall eat all the bread and butter I like. I'll have hot rolls for breakfast, I'll have potatoes for lunch and potatoes for dinner. And beer. God, how I like beer. Pea soup and tomato soup; treacle pudding and cherry tart. Cream, cream, cream. And so help me God, I'll never eat spinach again as long as I live."

When the massage was finished Evie brought her a cup of tea, a slice of ham from which the fat had been cut, and some dry toast. Julia got up, dressed, and went down with Michael to the theatre. She liked to be there an hour before the curtain rang up. Michael went on to dine at his club. Evie had preceded her in a cab and when she got into her dressing-room everything was ready for her. She undressed once more and put on a dressing-gown. As she sat down at her dressing-table to make up she noticed some fresh flowers in a vase.

"Hulloa, who sent them? Mrs. de Vries?" Dolly always sent her a huge basket on her first nights, and on the hundredth night, and the two hundredth if there was one, and in between, whenever she