“If you like it,” he said loudly, “you can have it. I don’t think much of it myself.”

And he thereupon unknotted it from his neck and handed it to her: a true specimen of one of his gifts. The girl looked overcome with horror.

“No, no,” she kept saying, “that isn’t what I meant, that isn’t what I meant at all, please take it back.” She thrust it at him, but he would not take it.

“I’m telling you,” he said, “I don’t like it, I don’t want it. My dear lady, I shall be most offended if you don’t take it.”

As he insisted, his accent grew broader and his attitude coarser. I could see from the girl’s face her fright at being thus involved with what she had not bargained for. She had made an overture only slightly more risky than she would have ventured on in her own society, and it had been picked up and twisted with the rude literal rapidity of which Dave was peculiarly capable. She had thought he was a pleasant young man, quite ready to embark on a little verbal provocation, but instead she had found herself caught up with a crude and solid object, now dangling there in her hand. She did not know what to do with it: her unhappiness seemed to outweigh the small touch of gratification she must have received at having her flippancy so seriously and publicly received. I was annoyed with David. I could see that he had done it deliberately to hurt her; she was not the kind of girl he liked, and he was now making no effort to minimize what he had done. It was irritation, I guessed, that had driven him to the gesture in the first place: he does not like to be fingered or patronized. As far as I can see, he has no right not to like it, for it is on such vicarious fingering that his career depends, but he has always liked to think that he can have the best of both worlds and that he can bite with impunity the hand that strokes him. Actors are like that: they live upon applause, but they cannot bear to see the grinning face above the clapping palms.

Finally the girl rolled the tie up and put it in her bag. I was glad that she had at least got it: perhaps in time it would afford her more pleasure than pain. I did not respect her attitude much more than David’s, when all is said: the relationship between audience and performer has always filled me with unease.