Of course, Tom Marshall knew O'Corrigan. He hailed him cordially, and it seemed to me that he had no little pride in the privilege. He even nodded to the bartender as we passed him, leading me to the archway whence we could survey the adjoining room to see what was going on there. But nothing was going on there. These late-night restaurants are at their best in colored pictures. There they seem to own an atmosphere of light and joy. There lovely women sip champagne, that gayest of wines, from dainty glasses, and gallant men seem to say to us that if you would have health and wealth and happiness you would never go home until morning, but would live with them in this bright world of wine and women and song. Really, they are melancholy places, especially in their gayest hours. If vice really were attractive, how vicious most of us would be! I do not say that O'Corrigan's was a vicious place. At certain hours its patronage was of the dullest respectability from the suburbs. Dull respectability is not supposed to be abroad in the early hours of the morning, but it does seek at times to hover on the edge of disrespectability with something of the roguish curiosity of childhood. And now the respectables and the unrespectables, a motley gathering in that garish room, amid the ugly debris of their feasting, made an unattractive picture from which I turned with a sense of relief to the quieter place behind us. As we moved to a table in a secluded corner, I saw Talcott and Bob Grant sitting with their heads close together over a litter of plates and glasses. Grant spoke to me. As he rose and offered his hand, I noticed in his eyes that watery brightness which comes in certain stages of conviviality. The effusiveness of his greeting might have flattered me had I not realized that his heart was unduly expanded by alcohol. To see such a great, good-natured animal as young Grant thus exhilarated was not surprising to me, but with Talcott it was different. I had known him only as a quiet, self-possessed man who, from policy if nothing else, I believed must be as circumspect in his life as in his clothes. Now he spoke to me. His greeting was perfunctory. In his eyes was that watery dulness which comes with the later stages of conviviality. His hair was tousled, his collar crushed, his tie awry; for whiskey muddles the clothes as well as the brain. He nodded to me; he wondered what I was doing out so late; he snapped his fingers and called loudly for Andrew. The summons to the waiter was for me a hint to be gone.