Charmed, the young man laughed; he was attentive as though at the feet of Socrates. Coleman had found him in a night club, where he had gone in search of Zoe, found him very drunk in the company of two formidable women fifteen or twenty years his senior, who were looking after him, half maternally out of pure kindness of heart, half professionally; for he seemed to be carrying a good deal of money. He was incapable of looking after himself. Coleman had pounced on him at once, claimed an old friendship which the youth was too tipsy to be able to deny, and carried him off. There was something, he always thought, peculiarly interesting about the spectacle of children tobogganing down into the cesspools. “I like this place,” said the young man. “Tastes differ!” Coleman shrugged his shoulders. “The German professors have catalogued thousands of people whose whole pleasure consists in eating dung.” The young man smiled and nodded, rather vaguely. “Is there anything to drink here?” he asked. “Too respectable,” Coleman answered, shaking his head. “I think this is a bloody place,” said the young man. “Ah! but some people like blood. And some like boots. And some like long gloves and corsets. And some like birch-rods. And some like sliding down slopes and can’t look at Michelangelo’s ‘Night’ on the Medici Tombs without dying the little death, because the statue seems to be sliding. And some....” “But I want something to drink,” insisted the young man. Coleman stamped his feet, waved his arms. “_À boire! à boire!_” he shouted, like the newborn Gargantua. Nobody paid any attention. The music came to an end. Gumbril and Mrs. Viveash reappeared. “Dante,” said Coleman, “calls for drink. We must leave the building.” “Yes. Anything to get out of this,” said Mrs. Viveash. “What’s the time?” Gumbril looked at his watch. “Half-past one.” Mrs. Viveash sighed. “Can’t possibly go to bed,” she said, “for another hour at least.” They walked out into the street. The stars were large and brilliant overhead. There was a little wind that almost seemed to come from the country. Gumbril thought so, at any rate; he thought of the country. “The question is, where?” said Coleman. “You can come to my bordello, if you like; but it’s a long way off and Zoe hates us all so much, she’ll probably set on us with the meat-chopper. If she’s back again, that is. Though she may be out all night. _Zoe mou, sas agapo._ Shall we risk it?” “To me it’s quite indifferent,” said Mrs. Viveash faintly, as though wholly preoccupied with expiring. “Or there’s my place,” Gumbril said abruptly, as though shaking himself awake out of some dream.