"But you always have to pay the piper, Nan," Wenny was saying. "It's no use trying to escape that. It's fearfully dangerous to live. I should say music was less safe than love." "Not if you use your reason, Wenny," said Fanshaw. "Who ever had any reason to use? It's an illusion, the result of thinking things over after they've happened." Nan left the table. Fanshaw found himself glaring indignantly at Wenny. "Gee, isn't Nan beautiful to look at tonight?" "O, she is!" said Fanshaw smiling with forced frankness. He felt a tumult like frightened pigeons in a box inside him. Heavens, suppose he was in love with Nan! Nan came down the redcarpeted stairs beside the gondola, pulling on her gloves. She stood a moment talking to the girls in the orchestra. Fanshaw leaned across the table. "Wenny, don't you think you had better not drink any more?" "What the hell business is it of yours? Haven't had half enough to drink." Nan came back to the table, a little sociable smile still playing about the corners of her mouth. "Well, shall we go?" she said briskly. "Look! Look outside!" cried Wenny, "it's beginning to snow." In the black space above the muslin curtain that screened the window they could see big flakes gently, breathlessly tumbling. "Thank you, sir; come again, sir," said the waiter as he let the tip slide into one of the pockets of his sagging vest. They were out in the snowhushed streets, the snow brushing their cheeks with occasional feathery gentleness like tips of wings of very cold birds. "Did you ask her?" said Wenny. "No. I shall next time. She's awfully nice." Nan was buttoning the fur round her neck. "Do you want to taxi?" asked Fanshaw, who had thin shoes on. "Ridiculous, let's walk. I love this anyway. Don't you, Wenny?" The black pavement shivered in squirms and lozenges of yellow and red and green light under the feet of people scuttling home out of the wet. All the sharpness of lights and colors and sounds was padded and blotched by the slow flutter of snowflakes swirling down out of the ruddy darkness overhead to vanish in the uneven glitter of the wet streets. Fanshaw took Nan's arm and made her walk fast, up towards the electric star that revolved slowly in front of a movie on Scollay Square, leaving Wenny to saunter behind them. They had passed the outdoor market where a few women with taut lantern jaws still hovered over the nearly empty pushcarts of the vegetable sellers and where brownfaced Italians still barked their apples and peppers and artichokes, when Wenny caught up to them with: "Say, wait a minute." They stopped outside of a nickel Odeon that belched cigarette smoke and calcium light. Overhead painted in blue letters pricked with red was the sign: Pretty Girls Upstairs. "Ever been up there, Nan?" Nan shook her head. "Let's go for a minute; the most grotesque thing you ever saw." "Absurd. We'll do no such thing," snorted Fanshaw.