urtier, about either. Yet
they already had in their faces that subtle indication of the
dependent that is found in all professional people who
habitually work for and associate with the rich only. They
had no sense of dependence; they were not dependents, for they
gave more than value received. Yet so corrupting is the
atmosphere about rich people that Gourdain, who had other rich
clients, no less than Clelie who got her whole living from
Palmer, was at a glance in the flea class and not in the dog
class. Brent looked for signs of the same thing in Susan's
face. The signs should have been there; but they were not.
"Not yet," thought he. "And never will be now."

Palmer's abstraction and constraint were in sharp contrast to
the gayety of the others. Susan drank almost nothing. Her
spirits were soaring so high that she did not dare stimulate
them with champagne. The Cafe de Paris is one of the places
where the respectable go to watch _les autres_ and to catch a
real gayety by contagion of a gayety that is mechanical and
altogether as unreal as play-acting. There is something
fantastic about the official temples of Venus; the
pleasure-makers are so serious under their masks and the
pleasure-getters so quaintly dazzled and deluded. That is,
Venus's temples are like those of so many other religions in
reverence among men--disbelief and solemn humbuggery at the
altar; belief that would rather die than be undeceived, in the
pews. Palmer scarcely took his eyes from Susan's face. It
amused and pleased her to see how uneasy this made Brent--and
how her own laughter and jests aggravated his uneasiness to
the point where he was almost showing it. She glanced round
that brilliant room filled with men and women, each of them
carrying underneath the placidity of stiff evening shirt or
the scantiness of audacious evening gown the most
fascinating emotions and secrets--love and hate and jealousy,
cold and monstrous habits and desires, ruin impending or
stealthily advancing, fortune giddying to a gorgeous climax,
disease and shame and fear--yet only signs of love and
laughter and lightness of heart visible. And she wondered
whether at any other table there was gathered so curious an
assemblage of pasts and presents and futures as at the one
over which Freddie Palmer was presiding somberly. . . . Then her
thoughts took another turn. She fell to noting how each man
was accompanied by a woman--a gorgeously dressed woma