Then Mr. Herman Loeb, of St. Louis, committed an act of spontaneous combustion. When came the turn of the black satin and the bobbing curls to bend over the rail directly above him, he flung wide his arms, overturning a wine bottle. "Jump!" he cried. Beneath the short, black curls a mouth shaped like a bud reluctant to open, blew him a kiss. Then came a cue of music like an avalanche, and quicker than Harlequin's wink the aisle was clean. "Gad!" said Mr. Loeb, his strong profile thrust forward and a light on it. "That little one with the black curls? Say! You can put her on your watch-fob and take her home." "Wouldn't mind!" said Mr. Loeb. "You and Moe Marx are like all the women-haters. You don't know it, but you're walking in your sleep and the tenth-story window's open." "We oughtn't to come up here in business clothes," said Mr. Loeb, eying his cuff-edges. A woman sang of love. A chorus, crowned and girdled in inflated toy balloons, wreathed in and out among the tables. "She's not in that crowd." Men to whom life for the most part was grim enough vied for whose cigarette end should prick the painted bubbles. A fusillade ensued; explosions on the gold-powdered air--a battle _de luxe!_ Mr. Kahn threw back his head, yawned, and slid a watch from his waistcoat pocket. "W-ell, a little of this goes a long way. If we want to pull out of this town day after to-morrow we've got to get down to Cedar Street early in the morning on that sweater job lot. It's about time for us to be getting across to the hotel." "Wait!" said Mr. Loeb. A jingling and a right merry cacophony of sound came fast upon the bubble bombardment, and then, to a light runnel of song, the row of twenty-four, harnessed in slotted sleigh-bells and with little-girl flounced frocks to their very sophisticated pink-silk knees. The devices of vaudeville are perennial. Rigoletto, who set a court's sides aching, danced to bells. The row of twenty-four, pink and white as if the cradle had just yielded them up, shivered suddenly into an ecstasy of sound, the jerked-up shoulder of one, the tossing curls of another, the naughty shrug of a third, eking out a melody. A laugh rose off the crowd. "Say, this town'll fall for anything! That act's got barnacles. But the little devils look cute, though. Say--say, old man, cut that out! This is no place for your mother's son. Say!" Mr. Loeb was leaning forward across the table, his head well ahead of his shoulders. From the third from the end of the row of twenty-four, a shoulder shrugging to the musical nonsense of bells was arching none too indirectly toward him, and once the black curls bobbed, giving a share of tremolo to the melody. But the bob was carefully directed, and Herman Loeb returned it in fashion, only more vehemently and with repetition.