Before the Americans rejoined them, the lift had returned and ascended with another covey of fancy costumes, including a man with a nose a foot long and a girl with bright green hair, dressed as an acrobat.  On its next journey the lift held Tommy and Nick’s party, and it held no more.

When the party emerged from it, they were greeted with a cheer, hoarse and half human, by a band of light amateur mountebanks of both sexes who were huddled in a doorway.  Within a quarter of an hour Audrey and Miss Ingate, after astounding struggles in a dressing-room in which Nick alone saved their lives and reputations, appeared in Japanese disguise according to promise, and nobody could tell whether Audrey was maid, wife, or widow.  She might have been a creature created on the spot, for the celestial purpose of a fancy-dress ball in Monsieur Dauphin’s studio.

The studio was very large and rather lofty.  Its walls had been painted by gifted pupils of Monsieur Dauphin and by fellow-artists, with scenes of life according to Catullus, Theocritus, Propertius, Martial, Petronius, and other classical writers.  It is not too much to say that the walls of the studio constituted a complete novelty for Audrey and Miss Ingate.  Miss Ingate opened her mouth to say something, but, saying nothing, forgot for a long time to shut it again.

Chinese lanterns, electrically illuminated, were strung across the studio at a convenient height so that athletic dancers could prodigiously leap up and make them swing.  Beneath this incoherent but exciting radiance the guests swayed and glided, in a joyous din, under the influence of an orchestra of men snouted like pigs and raised on a dais.  In a corner was a spiral staircase leading to the flat roof of the studio and a view of all Paris.  Up and down this corkscrew contending parties fought amiably for the right of way.

Tommy and Nick began instantly to perform introductions between Audrey and Miss Ingate and the other guests.  In a few moments Audrey had failed to catch the names of a score and a half of people—­many Americans, some French, some Argentine, one or two English.  They were all very talented people, and, according to Miss Ingate, the most characteristically French were invariably either Americans or Argentines.

A telephone bell rang in the distance, and presently a toreador stood on a chair and pierced the music with a message of yells in French, and the room hugely guffawed and cheered.

“Where is the host?” Audrey asked.

“That’s what the telephoning was about,” said Tommy, speaking loudly against the hubbub.  “He hasn’t come yet.  He had to rush off this afternoon to do pastel portraits of two Russian princesses at St. Germain, and he hasn’t got back yet.  The telephone was to say that he’s started.”