During the intermission, Genevieve detached herself from Robert and the Fanshaws on the pretext of needing to powder her nose, and went wafting through the bar looking for people she knew, catching her reflection in the long mirrors with a certain pleasure. The daringly backless Myrbor dress was the kind that emphasizes your nakedness rather than hiding it. She wanted Zachari to see her wearing that dress with his red velvet shoes. Shoes like mouths, the tongues licking high up her feet as she walked. She could still smell his skin.

There was a tap on her shoulder. Violet de Frémont in a dress that shimmered like the inside of an oyster shell, with a great rope of pearls around her neck, and delicate dove-gray pumps with tiny globe-shaped heels, inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

“Genevieve, darling. So good to see you.”

“Hello, Violet.” Genevieve wondered if her own smile was as strained as the countess’s.

“I’ve been thinking about you lately. We should have lunch, we really should.” She glanced down at Genevieve’s feet. “My, but that’s a lovely color of velvet. Zachari?”

The tiniest nod. “Yours too, I see.”

Her smile stretched wider. “You know, I do believe I saw a piece of that velvet down in Paolo’s workshop just the other day.”

“Oh, really?” Genevieve struggled not to show the hit. “Have you noticed that Paolo keeps your lasts and mine next to each other on his shelf?”

“Well, fancy that.” Violet’s smile was like a piece of elastic pulled to snapping point. “Goodness, darling, I’ve just seen…If you’ll excuse me, I must go over and say hello.”

A moment of cool satisfaction, but only a moment. She’d thought she was the first to see his workshop…he’d said so, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he? She’d like to gather all the countess’s shoes in a big pile, pour petrol over them and set them alight.

Five minutes or so into the final act, in which the three actors continued to move back and forth while conversing (but now on stilts), a man climbed up onto the stage and started reading seemingly at random from a newspaper while the actors whispered to each other, shrugged and wobbled.

“Is this part of the play?” Druscilla asked, when the theater manager appeared and two burly doormen mounted the stage.

Another man in the Upper Circle got up and started shouting, “Dada is dead! Dada is dead!” And someone else, who might have been Tristan Tzara, yelled, “Dada is reborn!” and began hurling cabbages at the doormen, who were still struggling with the man at the front of the stage.

Across the auditorium, Genevieve saw Violet de Frémont kissing her friends good-bye and leaving her box. Her husband wasn’t with her tonight.

“Where did you say we’re having dinner?” asked Druscilla. “I do hope French food is not so experimental as French theater.”