joy at being rid of her.

She tried the Shoreham first, and when the taxicab deposited her under
the umbrellas of the big trees and she climbed the homelike steps to a
lobby with the air of a living-room she felt welcome and secure.
Brilliant clusters were drifting to dinner, and the men were more
picturesque than the women, for many of them were in uniform. Officers
of the army and navy of the United States and of Great Britain and of
France gave the throng the look of a costume-party.

There was a less interesting crowd at the desk, and now nobody offered
her his place at the head of the line. It would have done no good, for
the room-clerk was shaking his head to all the suppliants. Marie
Louise saw women turned away, married couples, men alone. But
new-comers pressed forward and kept trying to convince the deskman
that he had rooms somewhere, rooms that he had forgotten, or was
saving for people who would never arrive.

He stood there shaking his head like a toy in a window. People tried
to get past him in all the ways people try to get through life, in the
ways that Saint Peter must grow very tired of at the gate of
heaven--bluff, whine, bribery, intimidation, flirtation.

Some demanded their rights with full confidence and would not take no
for answer. Some pleaded with hopelessness in advance; they were used
to rebuffs. They appealed to his pity. Some tried corruption; they
whispered that they would "make it all right," or they managed a sly
display of money--one a one-dollar bill with the "1" folded in,
another a fifty-dollar bill with the "50" well to the fore. Some grew
ugly and implied favoritism; they were the born strikers and
anarchists. Even though they looked rich, they had that habit of
finding oppression and conspiracy everywhere. A few women appealed to
his philanthropy, and a few others tried to play the siren. But his
head oscillated from side to side, and nobody could swing it up and
down.

Marie Louise watched the procession anxiously. There seemed to be no
end to it. The people who had come here first had been turned away
into outer darkness long ago and had gone to other hotels. The present
wretches were those who had gone to the other hotels first and made
this their second, third, or sixth choice.

Marie Louise did not go to the desk. She could take a hint at second
hand. She would have been glad of a place to sit down, but all the
divans were filled with gossipers very much at home and