oneself of Broadway at noon.

When they went out to dinner Imogen realized the completeness of
Flavia's triumph. They were people of one name, mostly, like kings;
people whose names stirred the imagination like a romance or a melody.
With the notable exception of M. Roux, Imogen had seen most of them
before, either in concert halls or lecture rooms; but they looked
noticeably older and dimmer than she remembered them.

Opposite her sat Schemetzkin, the Russian pianist, a short, corpulent
man, with an apoplectic face and purplish skin, his thick, iron-gray
hair tossed back from his forehead. Next to the German giantess sat the
Italian tenor--the tiniest of men--pale, with soft, light hair, much
in disorder, very red lips, and fingers yellowed by cigarettes. Frau
Lichtenfeld shone in a gown of emerald green, fitting so closely as to
enhance her natural floridness. However, to do the good lady justice,
let her attire be never so modest, it gave an effect of barbaric
splendor. At her left sat Herr Schotte, the Assyriologist, whose
features were effectually concealed by the convergence of his hair and
beard, and whose glasses were continually falling into his plate.
This gentleman had removed more tons of earth in the course of his
explorations than had any of his confreres, and his vigorous attack upon
his food seemed to suggest the strenuous nature of his accustomed toil.
His eyes were small and deeply set, and his forehead bulged fiercely
above his eyes in a bony ridge. His heavy brows completed the leonine
suggestion of his face. Even to Imogen, who knew something of his work
and greatly respected it, he was entirely too reminiscent of the Stone
Age to be altogether an agreeable dinner companion. He seemed, indeed,
to have absorbed something of the savagery of those early types of life
which he continually studied.

Frank Wellington, the young Kansas man who had been two years out of
Harvard and had published three historical novels, sat next to Mr. Will
Maidenwood, who was still pale from his recent sufferings and carried
his hand bandaged. They took little part in the general conversation,
but, like the lion and the unicorn, were always at it, discussing,
every time they met, whether there were or were not passages in Mr.
Wellington's works which should be eliminated, out of consideration
for the Young Person. Wellington had fallen into the hands of a great
American syndicate which most effectually befriended struggl