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“I work for a shipping firm in the south,” I said. “I’m in the office.”

She nodded, and we went and danced again. She was immensely clever at her job, very cunning in suiting her ways to mine. And presently she began to educate me a little in the finer points of her peculiar art. When that happened I knew that she was beginning to enjoy herself.

She said no more about money, apparently satisfied that it was going to be all right at the end of the evening. She told me a little about her life; it seemed that she had been brought up for the stage in some fifth-rate theatrical school. For a few years she had scratched a livelihood by occasional engagements in the chorus of provincial companies; then she had abandoned that for dancing and had wandered in a desultory manner from Palais to Palais, staying perhaps six months in each. She told me that her home was in Preston.

“It’s not much fun being on the stage,” she said, “when you’re out of a job most of the time. I’d rather do this. I’ve been in quite a lot of Palais since I started. Bournemouth was lovely—I was a silly to come away from there. But there was a gentleman. . . .” She stared absently across the floor, then roused herself and turned to me. “Sometimes one gets mixed up in a place,” she said quietly, “and then it’s time to move on.”