A waiter paused by the alcove where Eldridge Walcott was sitting and pushed back the little curtain and looked in and waited. Eldridge took up the card on the table before him; he fingered it a little awkwardly and laid it down: “Bring me cigars,” he said. The waiter scribbled on a card and passed on. When he had completed the alcoves on the left he turned and went back along the right, pausing before each one and bending forward to listen and take the order on his card. As he approached the third alcove he pushed back the curtain that half concealed it at the back and bent forward. When he passed on the curtain did not fall into place; it remained caught on the back of the seat. From where Eldridge sat he could see the woman seated in the alcove. She was alone, her back to him, her head a little bent as if in thought. He glanced at her carelessly and along the row of green curtains to the tables beyond. It was all much as he had imagined it--a place where one could spend time and money without too much exertion. It was the money part of it that interested Eldridge. His client had asked him to look into it for him as an investment, and he had decided on this informal way of appraising it. To-morrow he was to go over the books and accounts. The owners wanted a stiff price for the goodwill. It was probably worth what they were asking he decided as he watched the careless, happy crowd. People who came here were not thinking how much they could save.... It was not the sort of place he should care to come to often himself. Life to Eldridge was a serious, drab affair compared with Merwin’s. He liked to think how much he could save; and when he had saved it he liked to invest it where it would breed more.... He might take a few shares of the capital stock himself--his client had suggested it. The waiter brought the cigars and Eldridge lighted one and leaned back, smoking and enjoying the relaxed air of the place. He could understand dimly how people liked this sort of thing and would come day after day for music and talk and the purposelessness of it all; it was a kind of huge, informal club with a self-elected membership. As a prospective investor the charm of it pleased him. They ought to be able to make a good thing of it. He fell to making little calculations; it was part of his power as a successful man of business that he understood detail and the value of small things.