I longed to join the people on the stage
and dance with them: one of them was the most beautiful dancer I ever
saw. He told me he had come there to see her, and that when it was
over we could go somewhere where there was dancing. So we went to a
place where there was a band in a gallery and the floor cleared for
dancing. Very few people danced: the women only wanted to shew off
their dresses; but we danced and danced until a lot of them joined in.
We got quite reckless; and we had champagne after all. I never
enjoyed anything so much. But at last it got spoilt by the Oxford and
Cambridge students up for the boat race. They got drunk; and they
began to smash things; and the police came in. Then it was quite
horrible. The students fought with the police; and the police
suddenly got quite brutal, and began to throw everybody downstairs.
They attacked the women, who were not doing anything, and treated them
just as roughly as they had treated the students. Duvallet got
indignant and remonstrated with a policeman, who was shoving a woman
though she was going quietly as fast as she could. The policeman
flung the woman through the door and then turned on Duvallet. It was
then that Duvallet swung his leg like a windmill and knocked the
policeman down. And then three policemen rushed at him and carried
him out by the arms and legs face downwards. Two more attacked me and
gave me a shove to the door. That quite maddened me.
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