To achieve this she had, after all, to pay the price she had been prepared to pay to start with. In fact, it now transpired to be a much higher price than she had bargained for. But Honorius had been right in contending that it was not beyond her means to pay it. Some of the men she could not have borne, but Honorius had promised to see to it that she was not asked to do so, and the Priestess had been so completely frank about everything that there was no reason to suppose that she had not meant what she said. And, after all, during a passionate embrace one man was very like another; so would she really mind that, instead of being made love to by one man all through the night, she was to be the partner of several? An episode from her black year in Dublin came back to her. Some young men had come to the club intent on throwing a wild party. When the club closed, two of them had carried her off to a flat belonging to one of them. There they had played strip-tease poker until all three of them had forfeited most of their clothes. Laughing and fooling, one of them had then carried her into the bedroom and put out the light. A few minutes later the other had joined them, and as she had had a lot to drink she hadn't really minded.

The two young men had been friends of Barney's. The thought of him made her wonder what he was doing at that moment. Her immediate guess was that he was at some quiet country hotel in bed with an attractive woman - some easy light-of-love for whom he had so callously let her down. Then she remembered that it was not yet ten o'clock. More probably they were still sitting in the lounge over coffee and liqueurs talking trivialities but mentally savouring in advance the delights of the night to come. He would be smiling into her eyes, entertaining her with some gay nonsense and grinning that devastating grin of his.