Tom and Darby Lunn were lost together in talk. From the table’s farther end Durthal saw them together. The laugh of Dounia Smith, the shrill sneer of Lettie tossing her heels, the mutter of Lagora were a wave, gathering, crumpling upon the calm of Signora Sanni. Durthal extricated himself from Hill and Miss Gross. He headed through the disserried chairs. Stretched arms reached for wine and tastes of antipasto. The evening splintered and swirled. Food would draw it together. Durthal stood over Tom. “Here, old man. Change over. You sit between us.” Finding his seat, he also had the sense of haven beneath the spray and scatter of the room. Of the three, Tom was the only one whose voice carried beyond them: laughing. Dounia Smith eyed him with a tilt of her head. A finger, like a talon, flecked her cigarette. Her brows were thin and straight like the stroke of a sharp pencil on hard paper. Flora Sanni stood above the table, with a vast white bowl of _minestrone_. The crowd coalesced. The table narrowed. The chandelier, relic of fluted brass and drooping crystal, took on the tawdry tone of office and gave its light, self-consciously, heatedly, like an old servant, too laden with memory and years to want to work for so crass a gathering. The carved clock ticked: a clatter of plates drew down bent necks, beading foreheads. Sharp streakings of sound ribboned the table: swathed it: covered it with a warm liquidity. Then the whipped undertone of selves seeped up again, lapped over the inorganic sound, deluged it, drowned it in angular surge of assertions. The door gave a knock that was heard at last.... David had followed upstairs a pair who were held to slowness by the constant claim of the woman that she was too weary to go another step. “Come along, Phoebe!” The man had a high straight back. He wore a soft collar that bared his neck. David observed that it was wiry and clean. The hairs were clipped high from it. David had time to observe. Whenever the pair came to a rest, he rested behind them. Something impeded his passing. Timidity in part. The disclosing thereby that he had overheard them, that they were moving too slowly. His own scarce unconscious resistance to mounting those stairs at all. He hated the place. But he had no reason to give to Tom. And Tom took offense at his not wishing to come. “Why, dear man. Don’t you like Flora? I think Flora is splendid. Such poise! Or is the place too noisy for you. David? Davie, you must get accustomed to dirt!” A vehemence in Tom that silenced David. Doubtless this was life, and life no thing to shrink from. “But I do like Flora!” He could not add that he felt that Flora did not like him: did not seem to like any one who came there: nor the feeling that if she had known him different and uncomfortable, perhaps she would have liked him. “Well, then!” said Tom. The stout lady was sighing. “Why we ever come here, Jack! These stairs!”