Hilda half liked being drugged. She liked looking at all the women, speculating about them. The women were absorbingly interested in the women. How does she look! what man has she captured? what fun is she getting out of it? The men were like great dogs in white flannel trousers, waiting to be patted, waiting to wallow, waiting to plaster some woman’s stomach against their own, in jazz.

Hilda liked jazz, because she could plaster her stomach against the stomach of some so-called man, and let him control her movements from the visceral centre, here and there across the floor, and then she could break loose and ignore “the creature.” He had been merely made use of. Poor Connie was rather unhappy. She wouldn’t jazz, because she simply couldn’t plaster her stomach against some “creature’s” stomach. She hated the conglomerate mass of nearly nude flesh on the Lido: there was hardly enough water to wet them all. She disliked Sir Alexander and Lady Cooper. She did not want Michaelis or anybody else trailing her.