With the cadenced poses of a Ziegfield "Follies" girl, she walked to Claude’s chair and stood beside him invitingly. He opened his arms and drew her on his lap. She struggled just enough to put zest into the embraces he immediately engaged her in. "You haven’t invited me yet," she said, pouting. "Do you think I don’t eat or drink?" "Goddesses and sylphs live on nectar and ambrosia, you know." "Now you’re talking, old dear. But let me give you a tip. Those dishes don’t figure on the menu of a cheap Turkish restaurant in the gas house district. I do believe you can get them at the Plaza or the Ritz, though." Claude’s reply to this hint was to launch into caresses so daring that Mazie took alarm. She was in the habit of giving much less than she received, and she had not as yet received very much from Claude. Therefore she wriggled, with some difficulty, out of his grasp. Perhaps she also desired to anticipate the entrance of her chum. At any rate, Cornelia just then opened the door on the right. *III* "Time I came in," she remarked; glancing significantly from one to the other. "Yes," replied Mazie, looking the picture of wounded innocence. "Since Claude came back from the firing line in France—or was it gay Paree?—liberty and license look alike to him. All the same, my beamish boy, there’s a boundary between the two." "Boundaries exist only to be extended," chanted Claude, delighted with his own audacity. "I don’t know which of you is the more incorrigible flirt," said Cornelia, half in reproach. "Listen to the pot calling the kettle black," cried the "Follies" girl. "Somebody pass me a whiff of brandy to uplift me." "Don’t be vulgar, Mazie." Mazie’s answer was to tango to Cornelia’s cupboard, singing provocatively: "I learnt more from Billy, On the day I stayed from school, Than teacher could have taught me in a week." She would have said and done much more than this to annoy Cornelia. But she remembered in time that her sayings or doings might offend Claude Fontaine who, in the words of a fellow Outlaw, was "rich, but refined." She never knowingly gave offence to any form of wealth whilst there was hope of exploiting its owner even on the smallest scale. Besides, she was more than a little afraid of Cornelia. After helping herself to an undiluted drink, she pranced back to the studio couch and flung herself upon it, face downwards, with the abandon of a Russian ballet dancer. "Thank the Lord it’s to be a masked affair," she called out to the others. "What’d be the good of a regular look-and-see ball? Nowadays men are that timid, you can’t have a lark with them unless they don’t see what they’re doing, nor who they’re doing it with." "Are you throwing stones at me?" asked Claude.