"Intoxicants!" repeated the old lady with asperity. "Do I look like a person given to intoxication? I dare say your Castalia water is nothing but Croton whose flavor has been destroyed by distillation. You may bring me the sandwich I have mentioned and with it a pot of tea. Yes, thank you; lemon with the tea." As the girl vanished with the light tread that marked the service of the place, I again made as to rise, but the old lady lifted her hand with a delaying gesture. "Pray remain. It is not unlikely that we have friends and ideas in common, and as you were seated at the seventh table it is possible that some ordering of fate has brought us together." She took from me, in the hand which she had now ungloved, the copy of my minor poet, glanced at it scornfully, and tossed it upon the floor with every mark of disdain. "What species of mental disorder does this place represent?" she demanded. "It is sacred to the fine arts, apparently; an endowed tea-room, where persons of artistic ideals may come to refresh body and soul. Such at least seems to be the programme. This is only my second visit, but I have long heard it spoken of by artists, poets, and others of my friends." "I am sixty-two years old, young man, and I beg to inform you that I consider the Asolando the most preposterous thing I have ever heard of in this most preposterous city. And from a casual glimpse of you I feel justified in saying that a man in your apparent physical health might be in better business than frequenting, in mid-afternoon, a shop that seems to be a remarkably stupid expression of twentieth-century anæmia." "Attendance here is not compulsory," I remarked defensively. "If you imply that I must have sought the place voluntarily, let me correct your false impression immediately. I dropped in here for the excellent reason that this shop is the seventh in numerical progression from Fifth Avenue." "You were not guided by any feeling of interest, then, but rather by superstition?" "That remark is unworthy of a man of your apparent intelligence. I was born on the seventh of November, and all the great events of my life have occurred on the seventh of the month. If you were to suggest that I am of an adventurous or romantic nature, I should readily acquiesce; but the sevens in my life have been so potent an influence in all my affairs that my belief in that numeral has become almost a religious faith; and if you have been a reader of Scripture you will understand that one does not become a pagan in ascribing to seven all manner of subtle influences."