lon, and that's to be
too respectable----"

"Too Upper-West-Side!"

"----to dare to eat bread and milk out of blue bowls."

"Yes, I think I shall have to admit you to the Blue Bowl League, Mr.
Ericson. Speaking of which----Tell me, who did introduce us, you and
me? I feel so apologetic for not remembering."

"Mayn't I be a mystery, Miss Winslow? At least as long as I have this
new shirt, which you observed with some approval while I was drooling
on about authors? It makes me look like a count, you must admit. Or
maybe like a Knight of the Order of the Bunny Rabbit. Please let me be
a mystery still."

"Yes, you may. Life has no mysteries left except Olive's coiffure and
your beautiful shirt.... Does one talk about shirts at a second
meeting?"

"Apparently one does."

"Yes.... To-night, I _must_ have a mystery.... Do you swear, as a man
of honor, that you are at this party dishonorably, uninvited?"

"I do, princess."

"Well, so am I! Olive was invited to come, with a man, but he was
called away and she dragged me here, promising me I should see----"

"Anarchists?"

"Yes! And the only nice lovable crank I've found--except you, with
your vulgar prejudice against the whole race of authors--is a
dark-eyed female who sits on a couch out in the big room, like a Mrs.
St. Simeon Stylites in a tight skirt, and drags you in by her
glittering eye, looking as though she was going to speak about
theosophy, and then asks you if you think a highball would help her
cold."

"I think I know the one you mean. When I saw her she was talking to a
man whose beating whiskers dashed high on a stern and rock-bound
face.... Thank you, I like that fairly well, too, but unfortunately I
stole it from a chap named Haviland. My own idea of witty
conversation: is 'Some car you got. What's your magneto?'"

"Look. Olive Dunleavy seems distressed. The number of questions I
shall have to answer about you!... Well, Olive and I felt very low in
our minds to-day. We decided that we were tired of select
associations, and that we would seek the Primitive, and maybe even
Life in the Raw. Olive knows a woman mountain-climber who always says
she longs to go back to the wilds, so we went down to her flat. We
expected to have raw-meat sandwiches, at the very least, but the
Savage Woman gave us Suchong and deviled-chicken sandwiches and pink
cakes and Nabiscos, and told us how well her son was doing in his Old
French course at Columbia. So we got lo