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‘Was he wounded?’

Gilligan waked from his dream. ‘Look at his face,’ he said fretfully: ‘he fell off of a chair on to an old woman he was talking to and done that.’

‘What insolence,’ said the woman, glaring at Gilligan. ‘But can’t something be done for him? He looks sick to me.’

‘Yes, ma’am. Something can be done for him. What we are doing now—letting him alone.’

She and Gilligan stared at each other, then she looked at Cadet Lowe, young and belligerent and disappointed. She looked back to Gilligan. She said from the ruthless humanity of money:

‘I shall report you to the conductor. That man is sick and needs attention.’

‘All right, ma’am. But you tell the conductor that if he bothers him now, I’ll knock his goddam head off.’

The old woman glared at Gilligan from beneath a quiet, modish black hat and a girl’s voice said:

‘Let them alone, Mrs Henderson. They’ll take care of him all right.’

She was dark. Had Gilligan and Lowe ever seen an Aubrey Beardsley, they would have known that Beardsley would have sickened for her: he had drawn her so often dressed in peacock hues, white and slim and depraved among meretricious trees and impossible marble fountains. Gilligan rose.