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Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rain
on the dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that came
in under the door when she shut the window. This nauseating
foretaste of the luncheon she must presently go down to was more
than she could bear. It brought with it a vision of the dank
coffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug, the rain on the skylight,
the listless waitresses handing about food that tasted as
if it had been rained on too. There was really no reason why
she should let such material miseries add to her depression ....
She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxi
drove to the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It was
just one o'clock and she was sure to pick up a luncheon, for
though London was empty that great establishment was not. It
never was. Along those sultry velvet-carpeted halls, in that
great flowered and scented dining-room, there was always a come-and-go
of rich aimless people, the busy people who, having
nothing to do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from one
end of the earth to the other.
Oh, the monotony of those faces--the faces one always knew,
whether one knew the people they belonged to or not! A fresh
disgust seized her at the sight of them: she wavered, and then
turned and fled. But on the threshold a still more familiar
figure met her: that of a lady in exaggerated pearls and
sables, descending from an exaggerated motor, like the motors in
magazine advertisements, the huge arks in which jewelled
beauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from an
Alpine summit.
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