"Oh, go home, you fellows," he said at last. "You make me sick. Enough's
enough. Why the devil does every dinner like this have to end in a
debauch?"
In the end, however, both he and Clayton went along, Clayton at least
frankly anxious to keep an eye on one or two of them until they started
home. He had the usual standards, of course, except for himself. A man's
private life, so long as he was not a bounder, concerned him not at all.
But this had been his dinner. He meant to see it through. Once or twice
he had seen real tragedy come to men as a result of the recklessness of
long dinners, many toasts and the instinct to go on and make a night of
it.
Afterward they went to a midnight roof-garden, and at first it was
rather dreary. Their youth was only comparative after all, and the eyes
of the girls who danced and sang passed over them, to rest on boys in
their twenties.
Nolan chuckled.
"Pathetic!" he said. "The saddest sight in the world! Every one of
you here would at this moment give up everything he's got to be under
thirty."
"Oh, shut up!" some one said, almost savagely.
"Of course, there are compensations," he drawled. "At twenty you want to
take the entire bunch home and keep 'em. At thirty you know you can't,
but you still want to. At forty and over you don't want them at all, but
you think it's damned curious they don't want you."
Clayton had watched the scene with a rather weary interest. He was,
indeed, trying to put himself in Graham's place, at Graham's age. He
remembered once, at twenty, having slipped off to see "The Black Crook,"
then the epitome of wickedness, and the disillusionment of seeing women
in tights with their accentuated curves and hideous lack of appeal to
the imagination. The caterers of such wares had learned since then. Here
were soft draperies instead, laces and chiffons. The suggestion was not
to the eyes but to the mind. How devilishly clever it all was.
Perhaps there were some things he ought to discuss with Graham. He
wondered how a man led up to such a thing.
Nolan bent toward him.
"I've been watching for a girl," he said, "but I don't see her. Last
time I was here I came with Chris. She was his girl."
"Chris!"
"Yes. It stumped me, at first. She came and sat with us, not a bad
little thing, but--Good Lord, Clay, ignorant and not even pretty! And
Chris was fastidious, in a way. I don't understand it."