"They all live here and sleep here and eat here and work here and--and--love here," she said softly, and smiled, for again the limousine with the embracing lovers had paused by the side of Valentine's car, and the embrace still held. "No, the sleepers and eaters and workers of New York were in bed long ago. Everybody you see here in this push has his or her vital wires connected up at Squeedunck, Illinois, or Zanesville, Indiana or--" "Or in Adairville, Kentucky," Miss Adair added with a laugh. "No, you belong--anywhere. Creative people ought to have no--no home wires," Mr. Vandeford answered, and there was a queer sadness in his voice that he did not himself understand. "People with messages must have masses to hand them to. That's why you came, and, I suppose, must stay." "Yes," answered Miss Adair, "I want to stay--if you'll let me." "I can't do otherwise," Mr. Vandeford answered her. Then he turned and looked her full in her serious eyes. "But if you stay you will have to accept broad standards, or suffer." "That Mazie woman?" "Maybe worse." She sat silent until, a few moments later, Valentine drew up again at the curb before the Big Show, which had been out long enough to disperse most of its crowd, and was now receiving supper guests for the Garden Grove above. "I'm going to stay--with you--and 'The Purple Slipper,'" she announced, as he reached into the car for her and swung her to the pavement. "Goes!" he answered, with mingled emotions, which he could not have analyzed. Miss Adair was as good as her word. She accepted the reveling crowd of the garden, looked upon the abandon of drinking women and men, with only a slightly hunted expression in her eyes, and with her slim white hands applauded Simone when that artist made most audacious slings of her supple body in its scant clothing. She beamed upon the dancer when, as Mrs. Trevor, she came, at Mr. Farraday's invitation, to have a glass of champagne with them, and she quailed only once, when a band of extremely young girls, clothed in filmy garments, took tiny search-lights and went merrily hunting among the tables of laughing men and women after the lights had been put out for the sport. Her horror at observing Mr. Vandeford, who sat between her and the narrow aisle take various moneys from his pocket to defend himself from successive hunters, made her pale, and the moment the lights were flashed on again she rose to go. "Wonder what they'll do next," muttered Mr. Farraday, as he helped her into her wrap. Mr. Vandeford was not looking at his author or speaking. Once when he had put his hand in his pocket to get out a coin for one of the teasing girls with her search-light he had felt the Y. W. C. A. latch-key there, and it had short-circuited him entirely.