Spencer Mapes met me; the glass of egg-nog that he pressed on me might have been brewed in the warm friendliness of his smile. I found myself seated with Eva on a black satin puff in the centre of the floor. We were telling Mapes that we did not like egg-nog and would take punch the next time. A very short time after, I heard one of us say to Mapes that the punch was so weak that we should like more. The Little Metcalfs flew about, picking smouldering cigarette butts off their rugs, rescuing glasses that bade fair to tip over on books which people plucked from the shelves. We wondered what they meant to do with the books; after the third glass of punch no eyes saw print. The room turned slowly, then faster, and we told each other that we were sleepy from the cold outside. Mapes murmured solicitously: “Don’t you girls want to go powder your noses?” We knew that he wished to get rid of us; but even the recalcitrant I had no intention of getting rid of him. And Eva giggled. “There’s Nick--and he’s tipsy!” Nicholas was shaking cocktails that no one had time to drink. A pretty woman said, her voice blasting one of the dead calms that occasionally fall on the best party: “Lucullus Kahn reminds me of a fawn with fleas.” We watched her husband scamper madly to her, his face a knot of apprehension. But Lucullus Kahn remained unmoved. Spencer Mapes dropped down on the puff beside us. He looked sadly at Eva and said: “You poor little fish out of water!” She said to me: “Do you remember what Nick called me?” and began to cry bitterly. Mapes said again: “Don’t you girls think it would be a good thing if you went and powdered your noses?” We told him that this was the last hope of all men who yearned to get women off their hands. Smirking at him, we pulled out our vanity cases and fixed our noses. Bright fragments of the human race shifted, turned, twisted into tangled groups and rearranged themselves in patterns of craziness. A large police dog bounded from one forgotten glass to another, rapidly lapping the contents. And Eva caught sight of Nicholas once more and shrieked with laughter. “Nick! Nick! You’re gambolling! And it doesn’t suit you in the least!” He said: “Didn’t you want me to be a bohemian? All right! I’ll be a bohemian--part of the way.” He appeared to be sober enough to know the point at which invariably he would stop; and at once demanded to be told how long she meant to let that fellow Mapes hang around. The agitated clinking of ice in the cocktail shaker which he still held made a tintinnabulation of ghostly menace. When we left, in groupings that had come about casually, even the police dog was tight; he lay on his back in the middle of the floor, ridiculously smiling. Many people found themselves in one taxi. Nicholas enquired with resignation “Where now?” We said that we were on our way to Florence Quincy’s. “We can’t,” we assured him, “fail to show up there.” “Why not?” he demanded to know.