“Or even seventy——” Jerry bit in. “Hang it, no! They had teeth and hair and things. Grey hair or getting grey—that sort of stuff. One of ’em wore glasses and one of ’em smoked rotten cigars.” Jim squared off, looking at them in unhurried, but imperative fashion. “Have you two got your car here? Well, get your evening wraps and come along with us while we use it. We’re going to the Toast and Jam—to see if the people there know anything more, or can remember better than you, about these two men. And on the way down you can try to call back a better description of them.” Jim was of compact build, although so thin that he had not an ounce of flesh that could be trained down. There was something about him that looked very forceful as he faced the two boys. “I—we both have girls at this dance——” Crawf began, while Dum-Dum looked wildly around from four corners of his eyes. “Well, get two stags to take ’em, if you feel any responsibility about ’em—tell ’em anything—but come as quickly as you can.” The two boys vanished through the opening. “They’re still dancing in the dark,” said Joy monotonously. Jim consulted his watch. “We’ve only been here a little over six minutes.” “I never saw anything like it—whole dances in the dark. Do they keep it that way all evening?” “Oh, no.” Jerry was weaving with her fan an accompaniment to the music, unconsciously swaying back and forth in rhythm as she did so. “They turn ’em on after awhile. It gives you a new sensation, anyway——That’s good jazz, I’ll tell anyone.” That was it. Dancers in the dark—in search of a new sensation. Jerry was beckoning to a man who had come out to speak to the orchestra. “Oh, Fred,” she said, easily: “do me a favor? When Wigs and Davy see fit to blow in, will you tell them that we got sick of waiting and have gone out with Crawf and Dum-Dum?” “I’ll do that little thing for you; but they’ll be fit to be tied,” Fred responded with a grin. He stayed carrying on a light badinage with Jerry until the two boys reappeared, coats over their arms, their broad, mild countenances for once overrun with emotions, which were added to as Fred thrust them parting darts about how Wigs and Davy would pay them out for playing the fresh young Lochinvars. The two boys sat in front, and the trio sat together in back as before. Jerry was still humming the tune that the orchestra had been playing— “All the knowledge learned at College Still that don’t explain——” Jerry had found time to wish that she might have been among the dancers; Jerry, the excitement-eater. They had passed a movie palace letting out crowds from its first show. Excitement-eaters all . . . who for want of excitement of their own, had gone to swallow down excitement in reels—of indiscriminate kinds. Indiscriminate excitement by proxy—excitement that exhausted or stimulated, but created the appetite for excitement at first hand.