red her.

"We are fearfully late," she remarked, complacently, as she seated
herself and looked slowly around the big room with its ornate frescoes
and heavy chandeliers, its crowded tables and strange assortment of
types. "But it is much nicer--to see them all at once, I mean," she
added, untruthfully.

Gwynne, whose seat also commanded a view of the room, looked about him
with much interest. He had a vague association of impropriety with the
name of the restaurant, but he saw only a few painted females and
queer-looking men. The majority looked as if they belonged to the higher
walks of Bohemia, and quite a fourth were indubitably fashionable. But
his more vivid impression was that they all looked gay and care-free,
and that their personalities were not wholly obscured by clothes. After
lunching or dining at one of the great New York restaurants he had
carried away the impression of a tremendously fashionable school in
uniform--the women distinguished in appearance beyond those of any other
American city, but utterly unindividual. The social bodies of the United
States had interested him little, but to-night he glanced about with
something of the curiosity of a Columbus discovering the land of his
fathers. No doubt his Otis great-grandfather had been intimate with the
great-grandfathers of more than one man present; in this remote bit of
civilization he almost felt as if he were sitting down with a company of
relatives, at the least to a gathering of the clans. And he had rarely
seen so many handsome women together, nor such a variety of types.

Paula, who knew every one by sight and assiduously read the society
papers, volunteered much information while Isabel ordered the dinner;
Stone had been detained half-way down the room by a party of friends.

"That is Mrs. Masten," she whispered, with a respectful accent on the
name and in the significant tone she always employed when addressing a
person of social importance. "The youngish tall woman with white hair
and distinguished profile. She is one of the old set--the one Mrs.
Belmont belonged to--and fearfully haughty. Some people call her a
beauty, but how can a woman be a beauty with white hair? Lots get it
here and lose their complexions before they are twenty-five. It is the
wind and nerves and too many good times. I wonder I have not gone off
too, but I take a nap every day no matter what happens. Just beyond is
Mrs. Trennahan. She never did have any beauty with