aracteristically Latin. Few of the diners wore
evening clothes. The walls were refreshingly free from the hideous gold
decorations of the average hotel.

Men stared at Joan with undisguised interest and approbation. Her
virginity was like the breath of spring in the room. Women looked after
Palgrave in the same way. Into that semi-Bohemianism he struck a rather
surprising note, like the sudden advent of caviar and champagne upon a
table of beer and pickles.

They were given a table near the wall by the window, far too close to
other tables for complete comfort. Waiters were required to be gymnasts
to slide between them and avoid an accident. Palgrave ordered without
any hesitation, like a newspaper man finding his way through a daily
paper.

"How do you like it?" he said.

Joan looked about her. Mostly the tables were occupied by a man and a
woman, but at a few were four and six of both in equal numbers, and
here and there parties of men. At one or two, women with eccentric
heads sat together in curious garments which had the appearance of
being made at home on the spur of the moment. They smoked between
mouthfuls and laughed without restraint. Some of the men wore longish
hair and the double tie of those who wish to be mistaken for
dramatists. Others affected a poetic disarrangement of collar, and
fantastic beards. There were others who had wandered over the border of
middle age and who were bald and strangely adipose, with mackerel eyes
and unpleasant mouths. They were with young girls, gaudily but shabbily
dressed, shopgirls perhaps, or artists' models or stenographers, who in
dull and sordid lives grappled any chance to obtain a square meal, even
if it had to be accessory to such companionship. The minority of men
present was made up of honest, clean, commonplace citizens who were
there for a good dinner in surroundings that offered a certain stimulus
to the imagination.

"Who are they all?" asked Joan, beating time with a finger to the
lilting tune which the little band had just begun, with obvious
enjoyment. "Adventurers, mostly, I imagine," replied Palgrave, not
unpleased to play Baedeker to a girl who was becoming more and more
attractive to him. "I mean people who live by their wits--writers,
illustrators, actors, newspaper men, with a smattering of Wall Street
brokers seeking a little mild diversion as we are, and foreigners to
whom this place has a sentimental interest because it reminds them of
home.