The sombre poet, who naturally interpreted these exclamations as a call for "_da capo_," bowed and felt flattered and started off again: "Super-Smoke, an Ode." He found he was in for it. "Enough, enough," came from all sides, and it turned out that the gentlemen had merely wished to express their desire for something smokeable in the language of super-men. The next to ascend the platform was a slim, very elegant gentleman with a dark brown Van Dyke beard and a gleaming monocle. He had been introduced to Lilly. Dr. Salmoni smiled sadly, and held his curved left hand close to his nose to scrutinise his long nails. His intention, he said was to draw up an intellectual inventory of the evening. For the purpose he would make a few remarks as a basis of his "so-to-speak destructive construction of this social heterogeneity." With that, a hail-storm of audacities and personalities came rattling down on the heads of hosts and guests. Though Lilly understood only a fraction of what he said, she felt she had to blush with shame for each person his ill-natured words hit. But, strange to say, nobody took offence. On the contrary, each one upon getting his raking tried to outdo the others in noisy applause. "What a happy world," thought Lilly, "where people have become absolutely invulnerable and the most heinous sins simply add to their honour." Her own misdeed, from which she had suffered so long as from a festering sore, suddenly appeared something like a child's amiable prank. "Was it idiocy in me to grieve so?" she asked herself, and pushed her hips downward with her hands, as if to brush away all the old chains from her limbs. The elegant doctor could deal in compliments also. Each of the lovely women received her little bon-bon rolled in pepper. And when he spoke of a lotos flower that had drifted there from fairyland and still seemed to dread the glory of the new sun shining upon it, Lilly again saw all glances turned upon her. "But let her take courage," Dr. Salmoni continued. "Should she need some one to help her dreamily await the night, she may count, I feel certain, upon every one of us." He was rewarded with the enthusiastic applause of all the gentlemen, and Lilly did not even feel ashamed. Upon concluding, and after gathering in a harvest of praise from the auditors, who crowded up to him--those who had gotten the hottest "roast" were the most eager--he stepped to Lilly's side and said _sotto voce_: "I beg your pardon most humbly for having mentioned you in the same breath as this set. People on our level ought to have a tacit code; they ought to understand each other without making bald declarations. But I was tired of just cracking a whip. Besides, I may assure you, I don't _always_ play the fool." He stuck his monocle in his waistcoat pocket and looked at Lilly with his sharp grey eyes as if to tear her heart to tatters.