m, for it had been decided that this room should
serve as a lounge where dancers might sit between the waltzes.

"She can come in now," he shouted. He folded the curtains of his
strange bed; he lighted a silver lamp, re-arranged his palms, and
smiled, thinking of the astonished questions when he invited young
ladies to be seated among the numerous cushions. And Mike determined
he would say that he considered his bed-room far too sacred to admit
of any of the base wants of life being performed there.

It was well-dressed Bohemia, with many markings and varied with
contrasting shades. The air was as sugar about the doorway with the
scent of gardenias; young lords shrank from the weather-stained cloth
of doubtful journalists, and a lady in long puce Cashmere provoked a
smile. Frank received his guests with laughter and epigram.

The emancipation of the women is marked by the decline of the
chaperon, and it was not clear under whose protection the young girls
had come. Beneath double rows of ruche-rose feet passed, and the soft
glow of lamps shaded with large leaves of pale glass bathed the
women's flesh in endless half tints; the reflected light of copper
shades flushed the blonde hair on Lady Helen's neck to auroral
fervencies.

In one group a fat man with white hair and faded blue eyes talked to
Mrs. Bentham and Lewis Seymour. A visit to the Haymarket Theatre
being arranged, he said--

"May I hope to be permitted to form one of the party?"

Harding overheard the remark. He said, "It is difficult to believe,
but I assure you that that Mr. Senbrook was one of the greatest Don
Juans that ever lived."

"We have in this room Don Juan in youth, middle age, and old
age--Mike Fletcher, Lewis Seymour, and Mr. Senbrook."

"Did Seymour, that fellow with the wide hips, ever have success with
women? How fat he has grown!"

"Rather; [Footnote: See _A Modern Lover_.] don't you know his story?
He came up to London with a few pounds. When we knew him first he was
starving in Lambeth. You remember, Thompson, the day he stood us a
lunch? He had just taken a decorative panel to a picture-dealer's,
for which he had received a few pounds, and he told us how he had met
a lady (there's the lady, the woman with the white hair, Mrs.
Bentham) in the picture-dealer's shop. She fell in love with him and
took him down to her country house to decorate it. She sent him to
Paris to study, and it was said employed a dealer for years to buy
hi