life the opera or the theatre is only the prologue to the
evening. Our little party supped at Delgardo's. The play then begins.
New York is quite awake by that time, and ready to amuse itself. After
the public duty, the public attitudinizing, after assisting at the
artificial comedy and tragedy which imitate life under a mask, and
suggest without satisfying, comes the actual experience. My gentle
girl--God bless your sweet face and pure heart!--who looked down from
the sky-parlor at the Metropolitan upon the legendary splendor of the
stage, and the alluring beauty and wealth of the boxes, and went home
to create in dreams the dearest romance in a maiden's life, you did not
know that for many the romance of the night just began when the curtain
fell.

The streets were as light as day. At no other hour were the pavements so
thronged, was there such a crush of carriages, such a blockade of cars,
such running, and shouting, greetings and decorous laughter, such a
swirl of pleasurable excitement. Never were the fashionable cafes and
restaurants so crowded and brilliant. It is not a carnival time; it is
just the flow and ebb of a night's pleasure, an electric night which has
all of the morning except its peace, a night of the gayest opportunity
and unlimited possibility.

At each little table was a drama in progress, light or serious--all the
more serious for being light at the moment and unconsidered. Morgan, who
was so well informed in the gossip of society and so little involved in
it--some men have this faculty, which makes them much more entertaining
than the daily newspaper--knew the histories of half the people in the
room. There were an Italian marquis and his wife supping together like
lovers, so strong is the force of habit that makes this public life
necessary even when the domestic life is established. There is a man
who shot himself rather seriously on the doorsteps of the beauty who
rejected him, and in a year married the handsome and more wealthy
woman who sits opposite him in that convivial party. There is a
Russian princess, a fair woman with cool observant eyes, making herself
agreeable to a mixed company in three languages. In this brilliant light
is it not wonderful how dazzlingly beautiful the women are--brunettes in
yellow and diamonds, blondes in elaborately simple toilets, with only
a bunch of roses for ornament, in the flush of the midnight hour, in
a radiant glow that even the excitement and the li