Algernon Blackwood

“ She did not smoke. There was a sinking dread, a constant terror in her that required all her skill and courage to conceal successfully. That inner gnawing never ceased. The wolf of horror tore steadily at her very vitals. The handkerchief went from time to time to her mouth, but in such a way that the manoeuvre seemed quite natural. In her mind still echoed the words the specialist had used a few hours ago. Her visit that morning to Sir Malcolm was not the first. ”

“ It’s late, and you must be tired.” He kissed her, patting her on the shoulder. Fifteen minutes afterwards the room, so lately filled with music, whirling couples and merry voices, had darkness and the atmosphere of faded scent and stale cigarette-smoke to itself.
Meanwhile Cecilia Lance and Harold Sharpe were also talking in their taxi as he drove her to the widowed sister she lived with in Chester Street. They were in merry mood, satisfied with the evening just over. They discussed it in their usual way. Both voted it “ripping.”
“Yet I never really care for a gramophone,” Cecilia mentioned. ”

“ Husband and wife, a faithful, somewhat old-fashioned, devoted couple, who had just put themselves to trouble and expense to give the speakers a happy evening, had not a rag to their backs between them. Naked to the winds, vicious, false, and stupid, they were heading full speed for that hell in which the speakers, their detractors, did not, of course, believe. There was not a nastier couple than the Lindleys apparently in all Chelsea⁠—and this result had been accomplished by faint praise, offered with a pleasant smile ”

“ I The friendly little dinner party was over, and Cecilia Lance had thoroughly enjoyed it; the Lindleys were kindly, simple people; the gramophone had been turned on and her dancing partner, Harold Sharpe, had been there. Cecilia and Harold knew one another’s steps as intimately as they knew one another’s minds.
“Odd that Cecilia doesn’t marry,” Lindley remarked, half to himself, half to his wife, as they sat over a cigarette when the last guest had driven away. “She’s still pretty. Eveiybody likes her. And such a cheery soul.” He puffed his cigarette reflectively. “She has charm, too⁠—eh?” ”

“ Still, she amuses herself with Sir Malcolm, the good-looking nerve specialist whom she’s always going to see without the slightest reason.”
“What! That quiet old frump Molly has a lover!”
“Why shouldn’t she?” Cecilia championed her doubtfully.
Before her cigarette was half finished, Molly Lindley’s character was demolished, and her husband, who was “gay enough when you got him alone,” was insecurely balancing on one leg, which was certainly not fit to stand on. ”