Bellamy. He has an empty flat that I could have, and he would furnish it beautifully.”

            Though Targatt prided himself on an unprejudiced mind he winced slightly at this suggestion. It seemed cruel to Dmitri, and decidedly uncomfortable as far as Targatt and Nadeja were concerned.

            “But, Katinka, if Bellamy’s so gone on you, he ought to marry you,” he said severely.

            Katinka nodded her assent. “Certainly he ought. And I think he will, after I have lived with him a few months.”

            This upset every single theory of Targatt’s with regard to his own sex. “But, my poor girl—if you go and live with a man first like … like any woman he could have for money, why on earth should he want to marry you afterward?”

            Katinka looked at him calmly. Her eyelashes were not as long as Nadeja’s, but her eyes were as full of wisdom. “Habit,” she said simply; and in an instant Targatt’s conventional world was in fragments at his feet. Who knew better than he did that if you once had the Kouradjine habit you couldn’t be cured of it? He said nothing more, and sat back to watch what happened to Mr. Bellamy.

              

 

 IV.
 
 

            Mr. Bellamy did not offer Dmitri a position as book-keeper; but soon after his marriage to Katinka he took him into his house as social secretary. Targatt had a first movement of surprise and disapproval, but he saw that Nadeja did not share it. “That’s very nice,” she said. “I was sure Katinka would not desert Dmitri. And Mr. Bellamy is so generous. He is going to adopt Katinka’s three children.”

            But it must not be thought that the fortunes of all the Kouradjines ran as smoothly. For a brief moment Targatt had imagined that the infatuated Bellamy was going to assume the charge of the whole tribe; but Wall Street was beginning to be uneasy, and Mr. Bellamy restricted his hospitality to Katinka’s children and Dmitri, and, like many of the very rich, manifested no interest in those whose misfortunes did not immediately interfere with his own comfort. Thus vanished even the dream of a shared responsibility, and Targatt saw himself facing a business outlook decidedly less dazzling, and with a still considerable number of Kouradjines to provide for. Olga, in particular, was a cause of some anxiety. She was less adaptable, less suited to fitting into cracks, than the others, and her various experiments in song and dance had all broken down for lack of perseverance. But she was (at least so Nadeja thought) by far the best-looking of the family; and finally Targatt decided to pay for her journey to Hollywood, in the hope that Boris would put her in the way of becoming a screen star. This suggestion, however, was met by a telegram from Boris ominously dated from Reno: “Don’t send Olga am divorcing Halma.”

            For the first time since his marriage Targatt felt really discouraged. Were there perhaps too many Kouradjines, and might the Kouradjine habit after all be beginning to wear thin? The family were all greatly perturbed by Boris’s news, and when—after the brief interval required to institute and complete divorce proceedings against his film star—Boris left Reno and turned up in New York, his air of unperturbed good-humour was felt to be unsuitable to the occasion. Nadeja, always hopeful, interpreted it as meaning that he was going to marry another and even richer star; but Boris said God forbid, and no more Hollywood for him. Katinka and Bellamy did not invite him to come and stay, and the upshot of it was that his bed was made up on the Targatts’ drawing-room divan, while he shared the bathroom with Targatt and Nadeja.

            Things dragged on in this way for some weeks, till one day Nadeja came privately to her husband. “He has got three millions,” she whispered with wide eyes. “Only yesterday was he sure. The cheque has come. Do you think, darling, she ought to have allowed him more?”

            Targatt did not think so; he was inarticulate over Boris’s achievement. “What’s he going to do with it?” he gasped.

            “Well, I think first he will invest it, and then he will go to the Lido.