I went.  The place and the crowd literally enthralled me.  It was so gay, colorful, thrillful.  The host and the guests were really interesting—­to me.  Not that it was so marvelous as a studio or that it was so gorgeously decorated and furnished—­it was impressive enough in that way—­but that it was so gracefully and interestingly representative of a kind of comfort disguised as elegance.  The man had everything, or nearly so—­friends, advisors, servants, followers.  A somewhat savage and sybaritic nature, as I saw at once, was here disporting itself in velvets and silks.  The iron hand of power, if it was power, was being most gracefully and agreeably disguised as the more or less flaccid one of pleasure and friendship.

My host was not visible at first, but I met a score of people whom I knew by reputation, and listened to clatter and chatter of the most approved metropolitan bohemian character.  The Italian sorceress was there, her gorgeous chain earrings tinkling mellifluously as she nodded and gesticulated.  De Shay at once whispered in my ear that she was X——­’s very latest flame and an expensive one too.  “You should see what he buys her!” he exclaimed in a whisper.  “God!” Actresses and society women floated here and there in dreams of afternoon dresses.  The automobiles outside were making a perfect uproar.  The poets and writers fascinated me with their praises of the host’s munificence and taste.  At a glance it was plain to me that he had managed to gather about him the very element it would be most interesting to gather, supposing one desired to be idle, carefree and socially and intellectually gay.  If America ever presented a smarter drawing-room I never saw it.

My friend de Shay, being the fidus Achates of the host, had the power to reveal the inner mysteries of this place to me, and on one or two occasions when there were not so many present and while the others were chattering in the various rooms—­music-, dining-, ball-, library and so forth—­I was being shown the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar, and also various secret doors and passages whereby mine host by pressing a flower on a wall or a spring behind a picture could cause a door to fly open or close which gave entrance to or from a room or passage in no way connected with the others save by another secret door and leading always to a private exit.  I wondered at once at the character of the person who could need, desire or value this.  A secret bedroom, for instance; a lounging-room!  In one of these was a rather severe if handsome desk and a steel safe and two chairs—­no more; a very bare room.  I wondered at this silent and rather commercial sanctum in the center of this frou-frou of gayety, no trace of the sound of which seemed to penetrate here.  What I also gained was a sense of an exotic, sybaritic and purely pagan mind, one which knew little of the conventions of the world and cared less.