Mme. Fornez, despite the frowns of Holliday, clung to Beecher’s arm, insisting on being personally conducted, plying him with innumerable questions. "Oh what a terrible man! What an awful knife. I like the black men—_sont ils rigolots_—with their red and white collars. I want to see the bar-man toss drinks—so, in the air, Teddy. Come this way." All at once she stopped, and, facing about, took him by the lapels of the coat. "It does not annoy you that I adopt you—that I call you Teddy?" she said, with a simulation of timidity and a sudden concentration of her swimming black eyes. "Emma," he said, laughing, "if you stop there I shall die of disappointment." She frowned a little at the "Emma," but yielded the point. "You are not very responsive, Monsieur Beecher," she said, with a flash, "when I am so nice to you." "My dear Emma," said Beecher, who, not being in love, could see clearly, "if I don’t fall at your feet, it’s because I know very well that the moment I did you would bulldoze me like Bob Holliday." Emma Fornez looked at him with a sudden gay approval. "Teddy, you are very nice," she said decidedly. "You understand how to play. I forbid you to fall in love, to get caught by any other woman, you understand. You are to be mine for the whole season—_hein_?" "Nothing promised," said Beecher, laughing. Holliday came with two or three friends, clamoring to be introduced. Beecher profited by the confusion to make the turn of the room, which was crowded with laughing groups striving to penetrate the disguises of others while maintaining their own. At the faro table, a group from his club called to him to join them, but he kept on, saluting the dealer, costumed according to Bret Harte, with an approving wave of the hand. The assembly was one of those curious social demarcations which prevail when formal society essays to be Bohemian, and which is probably evolved by the women in their always curious desire to study at close range those whose lives they are generally condemning. As is usually the case, the guests were made up of those who remained wrapped up in a mantel of inquisitive respectability, and would go early; a large body who waited impatiently for this first secession; and a certain element, not all professionals, at present exceedingly punctilious, who would inherit the right to put out the lanterns and close up the doors.