"Well," screamed Dora, "this is a surprise. Where did you blow in from? And how in the world did you break in? Them hall-boys hasn't keys." She was drunk enough to be familiar. She knew Easter only by sight, but whisky bridged the gulf; in her sober senses she would have been too cowed by Easter's magnificent presence to have addressed her thus. Easter, smoking a cigarette, lay outstretched on a divan. She smiled in a friendly manner at Dora, and pulled her down beside her. To Ulick she addressed no word. She gazed at him, and sneered. Dora was in the seventh heaven of pride. She, poor little prostitute, one of the despised and rejected, living on the lusts of men, was treated not only as a human but as a social equal by the greatest living lady opera-singer! She embraced her, and besought her to drink. Easter thanked her, adding "I've already helped myself." She again challenged Ulick with her hard glance. He fell into a chair and held his peace. The two women drank a toast to "happy days and better acquaintance" and Dora, now half-seas over, supplemented it with the classic toast of "professional ladies" and kept-women. Easter laughed uproariously. Her descent into this moral sewer pleased her. Ulick was disgusted. Emboldened by her success Dora persuaded Easter to go with her into the dressing-room, from which, much later, they emerged wearing night draperies. A queer go, this sudden intimacy, ruminated the young man. The women were in high spirits, and high-balls were absorbed. Ulick saw that Dora was hopeless. The problem was how to get rid of Easter. Her car had been dismissed; no doubt about that. Curiously he asked: "But Easter, how did you get in here?" She turned to Dora, now on the divan, her drunken eyes admiringly blinking at the singer. "Dora, dear, where there's a will there's a way. After I lost you this afternoon at the Everett House"--"Lost me at the Everett?" gasped Dora. "It's a new one on me." She turned to Ulick and fairly snarled. "So that was your game, was it, to go hell-splitting through the town and get rid of my darling friend?" She wept. "You nearly broke my neck, d'ye know it, you herring-gut! Oh! I ain't got any use for a young chap who doesn't drink or smoke. He's sure to be up to something worse. He'll bear watching, so he will!" Easter triumphantly soothed the hysterical girl. They went into the kitchen. Soon a Welsh rabbit was on the table. Easter also possessed culinary technique. Impassioned by her superior prowess, Dora watched her with ravished vision. They drank again. The younger girl became frolicksome. She pulled Ulick's hair. She tickled him. She kissed and hugged Easter as if she were carried away by her friendship. Easter enjoyed the sport. They dragged the unresisting Ulick into the bedroom and assaulted him with pillows. They rolled him on the bed. Dora unbuttoned his vest. Then they tumbled over him, tantalizing him with their pranks. He saw that they were nude beneath their house-wrappers.