Someone laughed; it was James Pomeroy. He asked about the state of my soul; but it was my legs which were in a bad way, I told him. “What you need is to confess to me,” said Pomeroy. “What are your secret sins? They must be black, for I’ve never caught you out in one.” I said that we must have reticences. But I was studying the reticences of Nicholas Van Suydam, who stood amongst us and was not of us. His frowning concentration on the problem of Eva had been intensified by my remarks; he stood in thought, his eyes the only sign that he recognized our swarming presence. Pomeroy said in an undertone: “I wouldn’t offer a penny for your thoughts: I know them. If you will study the life of the outsider, why don’t you take it lightly and get some amusement out of it? Watch how I do it--for instance.” He had brought to this party a young girl, Priscilla Swords, to whom God had given a face and called it a day, according to Molly Underhill. Her widely smiling prettiness made us uneasy, so that we had huddled away from her. Pomeroy said to her: “Darling! Act pretty for the ladies?” Priscilla said sweetly: “It’s such a nice party, Jimmie.” He said to me: “You see? It’s beautiful ingenuousness that redeems the casual stranger in our midst. Van Suydam hasn’t beautiful ingenuousness.” One could never tell whether Nicholas had overheard what he was not supposed to hear, or whether from association with Eva he arrived at the same point in his cogitations that we reached by talk: he had a disconcerting way of chiming in. He said, now: “You’ve given me an idea, Dinah. Eva can’t help it. Therefore I am taking her home.” He pushed his way to the stairs, and was lost to our sight in the beehive of the second floor. “I might as well go too,” I announced; and relinquished the console. It was dreadful, upstairs. Florence, allowing all to kiss her, found time to tell me that she wondered what life was all about. Charles Glidden danced with a cream-coloured siren and, whilst clasping her with splendid histrionic ability, stared with his customary detachment at the various piquancies of the crowd. Molly Underhill languished in the arms of the young boy who had wanted her never to stop talking. Winnie Conant danced with her Addis, and called out to me: “I feel immoral!” I stood in the doorway feebly repulsing a powdered youth who wished to confide his ideas on taste; I was not receptive to Glidden’s suggestion, shouted to me as he whirled slowly past with the siren: “Get out and stick pins in people and watch them kick. Everyone kicks differently. It’s very amusing. The pins, of course you understand, must be mental pricks.” Someone at my elbow said distinctly: “This is a brothel.” It was Nicholas Van Suydam. He had not yet found Eva. But through a rift in the dancing crowd I saw her; her face was as white and exhausted as all others in the room. Spencer Mapes made it plain that he looked after her.