The Trans-Continental Air Race had been widely advertised, and the gigantic aerodrome was jammed with excited crowds. Claude at once plunged his companion into the thick of things. Anybody and everybody appeared to know him, and he knew everybody who was anybody. In swift succession Janet was introduced to the superintendent of the grounds, the president of the Aero Club, the chief contestants of the day, several foreign aviators of renown, the naval officer who commanded the first "blimp" across the Atlantic, and to so many other notabilities that her head began to whirl. Once or twice Claude left her to pay special homage to some lady, frequently an elderly one and a personage of uncommon account. In these intervals, while standing a little away from the throbbing, bewildering spectacle around her, she attempted to give some perspective to her impressions. It was gradually clear to her that the spectators resolved themselves into two classes: first, the _hoi polloi_ whose teeming throngs pushed along the common passageways and packed the benches in the stands to the point of suffocation; and then a small, compact group of men and women whose breeding, dress and carriage would have differentiated them from the other spectators even if the weather-beaten air of superiority with which they promenaded within the fenced-off and sacrosanct places, had not sufficiently done so. Superficially, the attitude of these chosen ones towards the gallery was the attitude of actors towards an audience: they affected to be oblivious of its existence, and yet it was patent that they were greedily conscious of the snobbish admiration and flattering envy which the crowd radiated collectively and in its component parts. Janet watched these bankers and railroad directors and senators with their wives and daughters urbanely encircling the placid airplanes, the restive airmen and the little extra demonstrations for the elect. And it seemed to her that they appropriated the special privileges inseparable from the governors of a democracy with an affably paternal air which was as much as to say: "What a very democratic ruling-class it is that runs this very democratic nation." Of course she knew that they were not really thinking this. Seeing that they were the ruling class, they ought to have weighty, superior problems of finance, transportation or statesmanship at the back of their minds. Had they? Or were they merely thinking that unless they were on the _qui vive_ they might be caught in an awkward pose by one of the brigade of camera men who were photographing celebrities for the Sunday pictorial supplements and the cinema current topics.