ess you prefer palms and an orchestra."

"I do," said Cassy, to whom a room with this man said only boredom and
who liked to see what was going on.

Then when, presently, they were seated at a table, to which the
chastened captain of the ham-and-egg night had piloted the way, Cassy
beheld what she had never beheld before, and what few mortals ever do
behold, a cradled bottle of Clos de Vougeot. But to her, the royal cru
was very much like the private room. It said nothing. A neighbouring
table was more eloquent.

Among the people seated there was an imperial woman with an imperial
manner, whom Cassy instantly recognised. She was prima donna, prima
donna assoluta, and though Cassy did not know it--nor would it have
interested her if she had known--dissoluta also.

To be in her shoes!

In that seven-leagued dream, she forgot Paliser, the delinquent
Tamburini, the trick that Lennox had played. In a golden gloom, on a
wide stage, to a house packed to the roof, Cassy was bowing. Her final
roulade had just floated on and beyond, lost now in cyclonic bravas.

"It was the Duc d'Aumale," Paliser was saying.

"Eh?" Abruptly Cassy awoke.

"Or, if not, some other chap who, recognising it, ordered his regiment
to halt and present arms."

"To whom?"

"To the vineyard where the grape in that bottle was grown."

Cassy shook out a napkin. "You talk just like my janitress. I never
understand a word she says."

But now a waiter was bringing delicacies other than those obtainable in
Harlem; in particular, a dish that had the merit of pleasing Cassy.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Muskrat."

"What!"

"Muskrat with terrapin for a pseudonym. The pseudonym shows imagination.
Let us be thankful for that. Gastronomy is bankrupt. Formerly it was
worshipped. Formerly gastronomy was a goddess. To-day the sole tributes
consist in bills-of-fare that are just like the Sahara minus the oases.
It is the oases we want and it is muskrat we get. That is all wrong. The
degree of culture that any nation may claim is shown in its cookery and
if there is anything viler than what we get here it must be served in
Berlin. It must have been Solon who said: 'Tell me what you eat and I
will tell you who you are.' He added, or should have, that animals feed,
man dines and, when permitted, dines devoutly. There are dishes, as
there are wines, to which one should rise and bow. But hereabouts it is
only by special dispensation that one gets them. In a