teach the New Dancing to children. Carl
listened with awe; and with awe did he gaze as Gertie gathered the
Golden Sheaves--purely hypothetical sheaves in a field occupying most
of the living-room.

After the stunts Ray delicately vanished. It was not so much that he
statedly went off to bed as that, presently, he was not there. Gertie
and Carl were snugly alone, and at last he talked--of Forrest Haviland
and Tony Bean, of flying and falling, of excited crowds and the
fog-filled air-lanes.

In turn she told of her ambition to do something modern and urban. She
had hesitated between dancing and making exotic jewelry; she was glad
she had chosen the former; it was so human; it put one in touch with
People.... She had recently gone to dinner with real Bohemians,
spirits of fire, splendidly in contrast with the dull plodders of
Joralemon. The dinner had been at a marvelous place on West Tenth
Street--very foreign, every one drinking wine and eating spaghetti and
little red herrings, and the women fearlessly smoking cigarettes--some
of them. She had gone with a girl from Mme. Vashkowska's school, a
glorious creature from London, Nebraska, who lived with the most
fascinating girls at the Three Arts Club. They had met an artist with
black hair and languishing eyes, who had a Yankee name, but sang
Italian songs divinely, upon the slightest pretext, so bubbling was he
with _joie de vivre_.

Carl was alarmed. "Gosh!" he protested, "I hope you aren't going to
have much to do with the long-haired bunch.... I've invented a name
for them--'the Hobohemians.'"

"Oh no-o! I don't take them seriously at all. I was just glad to go
once."

"Of course some of them are clever."

"Oh yes, aren't they clever!"

"But I don't think they last very well."

"Oh no, I'm sure they don't last well. Oh no, Carl, I'm too old and
fat to be a Bohemian--a Hobohemian, I mean, so----"

"Nonsense! You look so--oh, thunder! I don't know just how to express
it--well, so _real_! It's wonderfully comfortable to be with you-all
again. I don't mean you're just the 'so good to her mother' sort, you
understand. But I mean you're dependable as well as artistic."

"Oh, indeed, I won't take them too seriously. Besides, I suppose lots
of the people that go to Bohemian restaurants aren't really artists at
all; they just go to see the artists; they're just as bromidic as can
be----Don't you hate bromides? Of course I want to see some of that
part of life, but