"Why, certainly not!" from an eager Lilly. "Going all the way to New York?" "Yes." "Live there?" "No. Do you?" "Yes, since my marriage." "Do you like it?" "New York is not a point of view, my dear. It's a habit. Your system comes to demand it just as an opium fiend comes to require so many pipefuls. You know it's bad for you, but the fumes are delicious." "What fumes?" "The fumes of the metropolis, my dear. The perfumes of wealth. The next best to being Mrs. Four Hundred herself is to walk past her Fifth Avenue home and see her step out of her automobile." "I suppose so, if wealth is what one craves most." "It isn't a craving in New York; it's a necessity. But to those of us to whom life is pretty much of a compromise anyway, there is something in mere propinquity to wealth that is like smelling into a tumbler with its sides still wet from some rare old chartreuse. It isn't filling, but it's heady." "That's exactly the way I feel about life; it's worth going after if you only get the aroma. If I can't be Venus, then let me be the star dust that is nearest to her!" It seemed to Lilly that she was suddenly talking to her own kind. New York spoke her language. "Fearful coffee. I always say the only place outside of my own percolator I can get a decent cup of coffee is the new Hudson." "The Hudson? Is that a good hotel?" "Yes, splendid. Are you alone?" There occurred to Lilly a swift talent for the moment. "Certainly," she said, shaping her own voice into a petard against the little clang of surprise in the voice of her _vis-a-vis_. "I always travel alone. I'm a professional." "Really?" her glance running over the somewhat florid details of the corn-colored linen. "With that fine chest, I'll warrant you're a singer." "Right." "I wonder if you know Margaret Mazarin." "Indeed I do, from hearsay." "Well, we virtually gave Margaret her start. Madge Evans is her real name. My husband grew up next door to her in Indianapolis. She practically used to make our apartment her home. One day when she was about as close to bed rock as a girl could be, my husband said to her: 'Madge, if the managers won't give you a hearing, why don't you try some of those agencies in the Pittman Building in Longacre Square? I see all sorts of musical and theatrical agencies' signs on the windows.' Bless us, if the very first one to which she applied didn't give her the position that indirectly led her straight to the Metropolitan! Some one connected with one of the biggest patrons of the opera heard her singing down at a little old ten-twenty-and-thirty theater and got her an audience right off." "Oh," cried Lilly, her face ardent, "if only--I--some day--" "Yes," continued her companion, dipping into her finger bowl and pushing back, "Madge always says it was that tip from my husband, a mere chance suggestion, gave her a start." "Wonderful!" They paid, each her check, leaving small womanish tips beside their saucers.