money to entitle us to stay, for to the average
New Yorker the test seems to be not so much what one is getting for it
as how much money is spent when out for a "good time."

Smooth and glittering on the surface, like its little polished dancing
floor in the middle of the squares of tables downstairs, the Cabaret
Rouge, one could see, had treacherous undercurrents unsuspected until an
insight such as we had just had revealed them.

The very atmosphere seemed vibrant with laughter and music. A string
band played sharp, staccato, highly accentuated music, a band of negroes
as in many of the showy and high-priced places where a keen sense of
rhythm was wanted. All around us women were smoking cigarettes.
Everywhere they were sipping expensive drinks. Instinctively one felt
the undertow in the very atmosphere.

I wondered who they were and where they all came from, these expensively
dressed, apparently refined though perhaps only veneered girls, whirling
about with the pleasantest looking young men who expertly guided them
through the mazes of the fox-trot and the canter waltz and a dozen other
steps I knew not of. This was one of New York's latest and most approved
devices to beguile the languid afternoons of ladies of leisure.

"There she is," pointed out Kennedy finally. "I recognize her from the
pictures I've seen."

I followed the direction of his eyes. The music had started and out on
the floor twisting in and out among the crowded couples was one pair
that seemed to attract more attention than the rest. They had come from
a gay party seated in a little leather cozy corner like several about
the room, evidently reserved for them, for the cozy corners seemed to be
much in demand.

Gloria was well named. She was a striking girl, not much over nineteen
surely, tall, lissome, precisely the figure that the modern dances must
have been especially designed to set off. I watched her attentively. In
fact I could scarcely believe the impression I was gaining of her.

Already one could actually see on her marks of dissipation. One does not
readily think of a girl as sowing her wild oats. Yet they often do. This
is one of the strange anomalies of the new freedom of woman. A few years
ago such a place would have been neither so decent nor attractive. Now
it was superficially both. To it went those who never would have dared
overstep the strictly conventional in the evil days when the reformer
was not abroad in the land.