People had for some time been rising, passing out through the oxidised silver-framed glass doors of Spitz’s big brilliant dining-room; beyond these the vestibule was now full to the walls, so that its palms and tree-ferns rocked amidst the billows of a heaving human sea. Many guests lingered in conversation, standing in groups near the vacated tables. The glitter and blaze of jewels, adorning bizarre coiffures, bare and powdered throats, bosoms, arms, and backs,—the dazzling display of brilliantly-hued toilettes, made an _ensemble_ marvellously gay. And now, returning as they had arrived, but unattended by M. Spitz, came the party of notables from the German Embassy, talking together in loud, harsh, Teutonic accents. Von Herrnung, erect, stiffening to the salute as previously, remained in the rigid attitude until the Ambassador had passed. But this time the official finger beckoned. He turned, pushed back his chair, and in a stride, joined the squat, elderly figure. The yellow-white, heavily-featured face with its stiff brush of white hair above the square brain-box turned to him, the deeply-pouched, shrewd grey eyes looked past _him_ to the table he had left. The coarse mouth under the white moustache with the brushed-up points, uttered a few emphatic words. Then, with a slight nod, the representative of the All Highest at Berlin passed on. The swing-doors opened and shut behind him and his following. And von Herrnung rejoined his party, saying with a queer, excited breathlessness: "The ladies will pardon.... His Excellency had something to say!" The ladies were rising, looking for their theatre-wraps. He deftly lifted the barbaric garment of green velvet and sable-edged ermines from the back of Miss Saxham’s chair, and, opening it, held it to receive her tall, luxuriant person, mentally commenting: "With such hips, such a bosom, and such shoulders, the jade must be twenty-eight or nine." And remembering how boldly she had said to him that she liked red men, he thought: "Amusement here.... Nothing needed but time and opportunity—which this Bosnian affair reduces to a minimum." "_Gnädiges Fraulein_ will you not put on your _mantel_?" She told him that she was too hot. He insisted, with all the Teuton’s dread of chill: "But it will be cooler in the vestibule, and cooler still when we are driving. Do we not go on to a theatre? I think Lady Wathe has told me so?" She shrugged her splendid shoulders. "Nothing so proper. The _Jardin des Milles Plaisirs_, on the Champs Elysées. We’re all dead nuts on seeing the new dance from São Paulo. The thing that has exploded Tango and Maxixe, you know. Look!—the others are moving. Don’t let’s lose them! No! I won’t take your arm. Please carry my wrap with your coat." "I will put my coat on. Then I shall better carry your _mantel_."