He had the Club. That was the all important pivot of his life, his
altar, his fetish...a lot he cared what went so long as he had that.
BOOK IV
CHAPTER I
I
The Embassy was a blinding glare of light from the ground floor to the
upper story, visible above the wide staircase. After four years of legal
tenebration it was obvious that the ambassador's intention was to celebrate
the Armistice as well as the visit of his King to Paris with an almost
impish demonstration of the recaptured right to extravagance, obliterate
the dry economical past. The ambassador's country might be intolerably poor
after the war, but like many other prudent nobles he had invested money in
North and South America, and was able to entertain his sovereign out of his
private purse. He had made up his mind to give the first brilliant function
following the sudden end of La Grande Guerre and one that it would be
difficult for even Paris to eclipse.
All Paris had burst forth into illumination of street and shop after
nightfall, but Alexina had seen no such concentrated blaze as this; and her
eyes, long accustomed to a solitary globe high in the ceiling of her room,
blinked a little, strong as they were. She had come with the Marquis and
Marquise de Morsigny, and after they had passed the long receiving line
where the King in his simple worn uniform stood beside the resplendent
ambassador, her friends' attention had been diverted to a group of
acquaintances chattering excitedly over the startling munificence that
seemed to them prophetic of a swift renaissance.
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