Helene looked about curiously, as the big tea-room began to fill with
its usual late afternoon crowd of patrons,--young, old and indeterminate
in age. Women of maturely years, young misses from "finishing" schools,
demimondaine, social "bounders" deluded by the glitter of their own
jewelry and the thrill of their wasted money that they were climbing
into New York society--these and other curious types rubbed elbows in
this melting pot of folly. The tinkle of glasses, the increasing buzz
of conversation, the empty laughter of too many emptied cocktail glasses
mingled with the droning music of an Hawaiian string quartette in the
far corner.

Suddenly, with banging tampani and the crash of cymbals, rattle of
tambourines and beating of tomtoms, the barbaric Ethiopians of the
dancing orchestra began their syncopated outrages against every known
law of harmony--swinging weirdly into the bewitching, tickling, tingling
rhythm of a maxixe.

"How strange!" murmured Helene, as the waiter brought them some
champagne and indigestible pastries--the true ingredients of 'dansant
the'.

"Yes, on with the dance-let joy be unrefined! The fall of the Roman
Empire was the bounce of a rubber nursery ball, compared with this New
York avalanche of luxurious satiation! Now, my child, old Da-da, is
going to become too intoxicated to talk three words to any of these
gallants and their lassies. Grimsby did not write a monologue for me,
so I must pantomime: you will have to carry the speaking part of our
playlet. Flatter them--but don't leave my side to dance!"

The first bottle of wine had been carried away by the waiter, (half
emptied it is true,) as he filled a second order. Shirley shielded his
face beneath a drooping spray of artificial blooms from the top of
their wallbower. Several young men were approaching them, and the
criminologist noted with relief that they evidenced their afternoon
libations even so early. Eyes dulled with over-stimulus were the less
analytical. Chance was favoring him. The newcomers were garbed in that
debonair and "cultured" modishness so dear to the hearts of magazine
illustrators. Faces, weak with sunken cheek lines, strong in creases
of selfishness, darkened by the brush strokes of nocturnal excesses and
seared, all of them with the brand mark of inbred rascality, identified
them to Shirley as members of that shrewd class of sycophants who feast
on the follies of the more amateurish moths of the Broadway Can