When he had got ten yards on his way towards Harold Etches and a fiver
he felt something in his hand. The Countess's fan was sticking between
his fingers. It had unhooked itself from her chain. He furtively
pocketed it.
VIII
"Just the same as dancing with any other woman!" He told this untruth in
reply to a question from Shillitoe. It was the least he could do. And
any other young man in his place would have said as much or as little.
"What was she laughing at?" somebody asked.
"Ah!" said Denry, judiciously, "wouldn't you like to know?"
"Here you are!" said Etches, with an inattentive, plutocratic gesture
handing over a five-pound note. He was one of those men who never
venture out of sight of a bank without a banknote in their pockets--
"Because you never know what may turn up."
Denry accepted the note with a silent nod. In some directions he was
gifted with astounding insight, and he could read in the faces of the
haughty males surrounding him that in the space of a few minutes he had
risen from nonentity into renown. He had become a great man. He did not
at once realise how great, how renowned. But he saw enough in those eyes
to cause his heart to glow, and to rouse in his brain those ambitious
dreams which stirred him upon occasion.
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