She extended her hand toward the Egyptian hordes beneath them, looking at him curiously. "And that interests you?" "Both interest me. That and this. Everything is interesting," he said, with a smile that comprehended her. "Especially you and your motive." "You know I'm not one of--" she began abruptly. He shrugged his shoulders good-humoredly, and in his eyes was the same look of delighted malice that had brought him to her. "You needn't explain. Your manner was perfect. I quite understand you--much better than you believe." He moved forward, joining the movement into the dining-room. She followed, watching him covertly, enveloped still by his unusual personality. As the chorus girls still persisted in their display of mannered stateliness, the men listened to Harrigan Blood, who had begun to coin ideas. "Count, here you have America in a thimble." He elevated his second cocktail, speaking in the slightly raised tone of one who is accustomed to the attention of all listeners. "Your Frenchman takes an afternoon sipping himself into gaiety; your German begins to sing only when he has drunk up a river of beer; but your American--he's different! What do we do? We've won or we've lost--we've got to rejoice or forget--it's all the same. We bolt to a bar and cry: 'Tom, throw something into me that'll explode!' And he hands us a cocktail! Here's America: a hundred millions in a generation, a century's progress in a decade--the future to-morrow, and a change of mood in a second!" He ended, swallowing his drink in a gulp. Like most mad geniuses of the press, he drank enormously, feeding thus the brain that he punished without mercy. Busby, who peddled epigrams, murmured to himself with a view to future authorship, "A cocktail is an explosion of spirits; a cocktail...." The chorus girls, who regarded Harrigan Blood as a sort of demigod who could make a reputation with a stroke of his pen, acclaimed this sally with exaggerated delight. The party crowded into the dining-room, seeking their places. CHAPTER III Doré found herself between Judge Massingale and Lindaberry, Harrigan Blood opposite between Georgie Gwynne and Violetta Pax. Sassoon was at the farther end, opposite Lindaberry, with Adèle Vickers and Busby to his right, and Paula Stuart and the Comte de Joncy on his left, Consuelo Vincent sharing the noble guest, with Massingale next to her. Beside each feminine plate a bouquet of orchids and yellow pansies, daintily blended, was waiting, and from the loosely bound stems the edge of a bank-note showed--a slit of indecipherable green.