But Atlantic City at night. Alfred recalled it as a picture for such different painters as Whistler or Toulouse-Lautrec. A sight not to be duplicated. Miles of electric lamps light up the boardwalk. Even the darker spaces above the Pickle-Pier are festooned with lace-like fire. It is a carnival of flame. You may start from the Inlet with an open book, walk for miles, perusing it all the while, until you reach the lower end of the promenade and touch the last wooden rail. The enormous amount of electricity consumed seems to make the air vital. Through those garlands of light moves a mob of well-behaved humans. The women are more mysterious than during the day time. If you are still youthful you encounter magnetic glances. Dazzling glances. Sumptuous evening toilettes assault your nerves. Wealth envelopes you. Apparently there is no poverty, no sickness, no unhappiness in existence. The optimistic exuberance of the American is seen here at its most depressing. Mark Tapley run to seed. There is a suggestion of the overblown, of the snobbish, in this al-fresco display; yet if you are not seeking the fly in the ointment you may enjoy as you would enjoy the gorgeous tableaux of Aida or Salammbô. It is all as unreal. How vulgar, how damnably vulgar! exclaimed Alfred, and he remembered the women he had seen at his hotel, their fingers hooped with opals, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds, and holding green corn on the cob to their sensual lips. A dozen mouths simultaneously opened, pink and pearly traps; there was a snapping of dentals, a gnashing of corn. The diamonds flashed, the emeralds blazed with murky green fire, and the sinister opalescence of the unlucky stone matched the colour of the succulent slaughtered vegetable. Surely no other vegetable but corn could enjoy such a scintillating death at the teeth of those pretty, overdressed matrons and silly maids. Alfred shuddered at the memory. Then he saw something that gave him a start and caused him to whistle, interrogatively. Coming toward him was Mona Milton keeping in tow a blond youth in flannels. Evidently she had spied Alfred first. She made a friendly signal, then turning on her escort, she spoke words that acted as would a magical formula for disappearance. He faded into the crowd and Mona was soon shaking hands with the critic.