“Sit down, my darling child,” said the pseudo Grimsby, as he dropped into a seat behind the table, which was protected from the lights, and furthest away from any possible visitors.  “We are early, avoiding the crush.  Soon the crowd will be here.  We must have some champagne at once, to assist me in my defensive tactics.  You will have to do most of the talking.  Remember, we are going to the Winter Garden musical review when we leave here:  you may tell this to whom you will.”

Helene looked about curiously, as the big tea-room began to fill with its usual late afternoon crowd of patrons,—­young, old and indeterminate in age.  Women of maturely years, young misses from “finishing” schools, demimondaine, social “bounders” deluded by the glitter of their own jewelry and the thrill of their wasted money that they were climbing into New York society—­these and other curious types rubbed elbows in this melting pot of folly.  The tinkle of glasses, the increasing buzz of conversation, the empty laughter of too many emptied cocktail glasses mingled with the droning music of an Hawaiian string quartette in the far corner.

Suddenly, with banging tampani and the crash of cymbals, rattle of tambourines and beating of tomtoms, the barbaric Ethiopians of the dancing orchestra began their syncopated outrages against every known law of harmony—­swinging weirdly into the bewitching, tickling, tingling rhythm of a maxixe.

“How strange!” murmured Helene, as the waiter brought them some champagne and indigestible pastries—­the true ingredients of ‘dansant the’.

“Yes, on with the dance-let joy be unrefined!  The fall of the Roman Empire was the bounce of a rubber nursery ball, compared with this New York avalanche of luxurious satiation!  Now, my child, old Da-da, is going to become too intoxicated to talk three words to any of these gallants and their lassies.  Grimsby did not write a monologue for me, so I must pantomime:  you will have to carry the speaking part of our playlet.  Flatter them —­but don’t leave my side to dance!”

The first bottle of wine had been carried away by the waiter, (half emptied it is true,) as he filled a second order.  Shirley shielded his face beneath a drooping spray of artificial blooms from the top of their wallbower.  Several young men were approaching them, and the criminologist noted with relief that they evidenced their afternoon libations even so early.  Eyes dulled with over-stimulus were the less analytical.  Chance was favoring him.  The newcomers were garbed in that debonair and “cultured” modishness so dear to the hearts of magazine illustrators.  Faces, weak with sunken cheek lines, strong in creases of selfishness, darkened by the brush strokes of nocturnal excesses and seared, all of them with the brand mark of inbred rascality, identified them to Shirley as members of that shrewd class of sycophants who feast on the follies of the more amateurish moths of the Broadway Candles.