smoke thickened. I prepared for a boring evening.

One of the Oxford boys said he knew an awfully good story, but it was
rather risky, you know. I pricked up my ears. Did we know the
story--story about a fellah--fellah who had an aunt, you know? And
fellah's aunt was most frightfully keen on dogs and all that, you
know.... After three minutes of it I lost interest in the story. It
concerned Old George and Herbert and young Helen, and various other
people who seemed familiar to everybody but myself.

I never heard the finish of it. I became rather interested in a scene
near the window, where a boy of about my own age was furiously kissing a
girl somewhat younger. Then the lady at my side stretched a long arm
towards me, and languished, and making the best of a bad job, I
languished, too. When the funny story and the fellah's aunt had been
disposed of, some one else went to the piano and played Debussy, and the
anarchist brought me another drink; and the whole thing was such
painfully manufactured Bohemianism that it made me a little tired. The
room, the appointments, the absence of light, Debussy, the drinks, and
the girls' costumes were so obviously part of an elaborate make-up, an
arrangement of life. The only spontaneous note was that which was being
struck near the window. I decided to slip away, and fell down the ragged
stairs into Chelsea, and looked upon the shadow-fretted streets, where
the arc-lamps, falling through the trees, dappled the pavements with
light.

The skies were dashed with stars and a sick moon. It was trying to snow.
I tripped down the steps from the door, and ran lightly into a girl who
stood at the gate, looking up at the room I had just left. The cheek
that was turned toward me was clumsily daubed with carmine and rouge.
Snowflakes fell dejectedly about her narrow shoulders. She just glanced
at me, and then back at the window. I looked up, too. The piano was at
it again, and some one was singing. The thread of light just showed you
the crimson curtains and the heavy oak beams. The pianist broke into
Delilah's song, and the voice swam after it. It was a clear, warm
voice, typical of the fifth-rate concert platform. But the girl, her
face uplifted, dropped her lips in a half-whispered exclamation of
wonder, "Cuh!" I should have said that she was, for the first time,
touching finger-tips with beauty. It moved her as something comic should
have done. Her face lit to a smile, and then a chuckle