odours
swept them inward. They descended a flight of winding steps to a
subterranean anteroom of stone. Dim lights winked at them from stone
niches and from a cleft in the rock to one side a prim little maid in
a ruched white cap took Joe's hat. There should have been a troglodyte
attendant, instead. On the other side of swinging glass doors was much
clatter and laughter and the indistinct voice of a woman above a
rhythmic strumming and the bleat of a saxophone. The transition to
this other side was sudden and bewildering. The glimmer burst into a
glare, the dim echo swelled into a roar as the door opened, and Joe
stood blinking, asking for a table for two. As he threaded his way
between tables, past careening waiters swinging aloft perilous trays,
a girl in a crimson evening frock came wandering carelessly through
the aisle toward him, her hands clasped behind her back, her eyes
searching the crowd sitting about her. Her figure was short and pudgy
and so violently compressed into her crimson gown that she seemed to
be oozing out of a scanty chalice. She was singing a most provocative
song and, catching sight of Joe as he struggled along, face uptilted,
and, looking into his eyes most impudently, let him have the full
import of her words.

Joe gave her a deliberate, knowing wink. With a careless shrug she
moved away in search of more promising and sensitive material.

He passed, the toxine of gaiety mounting to his head, to a small table
tucked into a remote corner, where the waiter was holding out a chair
for him.

"Won't do, George," he said, refusing the proffered chair. "We can't
be buried way back here. We aren't dead ones, you know."

The waiter raised a deprecating shoulder but Mary Louise broke in,
"Oh, don't bother! This is all right, Joe." She had already seated
herself and was drawing off her gloves. Her face looked hot and weary,
and long wisps of hair were clinging damply to her temples.

"Wish we could have had a table over there," indicating two or three
vacant ones near the orchestra and the base of the jongleur's
operations. "We're out of it here. Well, at any rate, what are you
going to have?"

She turned from a weary inspection of adjoining tables. "Oh, anything.
Some lemonade, I suppose."

"Don't want to celebrate? This is our first party." His eyes and smile
were eager.

"No. Of course not, Joe. You know better than that."

"Two lemonades," he said to the waiter regretfully. Somehow it