The brazen patter of his young friend rippled on. A growing gamin coarseness in her talk with a nervous, restless twitter underneath. Her dark child eyes, perverse under their touch of black paint, swung eagerly through the crowd. Her talk of Johns, of dumb times and moldy times, of classy times and classy memories varied only slightly. She liked dancing and amusement parks. Automobile riding not so good. And besides you had to be careful. There were some Johns who thought it cute to play caveman. Yes, she'd had a lot of close times, but they wouldn't get her. Never, no, never no more. Anyway, not while there was music and dancing and a whoop-de-da-da in the amusement parks. The newspaper man, listening, thought, "An infant gone mad with her dolls. Or no, vice has lost its humanness. She's the symbol of new sin--the unhuman, passionless whirligig of baby girls and baby boys through the cabarets." * * * * * They came back from a dance and continued to sit. The din was still mounting. Entertainers fighting against the racket. Music fighting against the racket. Bored men and women finally achieving a bedlam and forgetting themselves in the artifice of confusion. The newspaper man looking at his young friend saw her taking it in. There was something he had been trying to fathom about her during her breathless chattering. She talked, danced, whirled, laughed, let loose giggling cries. And yet her eyes, the part that the rouge pot or the bead stick couldn't reach, seemed to grow deader and deader. The jazz band let out the crash of a new melody. The voices of the crowd rose in an "ah-ah-ah." Waiters were shoving fresh tables into the place, squeezing fresh arrivals around them. The flapper had paused in her breathless rigmarole of Johns and memories. Leaning forward suddenly she cried into the newspaper man's ear above the racket: "Say this is a dumb place." The newspaper man smiled. "Ain't it, though?" she went on. There was a pause and then the breathless voice sighed. She spoke. "Gee!"--with a laugh that still seemed breathless--"gee, but it's lonely here!" THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MASTERPIECE "You come with me to the Art Institute today," said Max Kramm. "My friend Broun has an exhibition. You know Broun? Ah, I think he is today the greatest living artist. No, we will walk. It is only four or five blocks. And I tell you a story." A story from Max Kramm is worth attention even though it is hot and though the Boul Mich pavement feels like a stove griddle through the leather of one's shoes. For the Dante-faced Max, in addition to being one of the leading piano professors of the country, the billiard champion of the Chicago Athletic Club and the most erudite porcelain connoisseur in Harper Avenue, is one of the survivors of the race of raconteurs that flourished in the time of nickel cigars and the free lunch.