As this remark, adequately yessed, had been on the tip of Mr. Gilbert's tongue, he could not be blamed for rather abruptly changing the subject.
"Where's Gloria?"
"She ought to be here any minute."
"Have you met my daughter, Mr.----?"
"Haven't had the pleasure. I've heard Dick speak of her often."
"She and Richard are cousins."
"Yes?" Anthony smiled with some effort. He was not used to the society of his seniors, and his mouth was stiff from superfluous cheerfulness. It was such a pleasant thought about Gloria and Dick being cousins. He managed within the next minute to throw an agonized glance at his friend.
Richard Caramel was afraid they'd have to toddle off.
Mrs. Gilbert was tremendously sorry.
Mr. Gilbert thought it was too bad.
Mrs. Gilbert had a further idea--something about being glad they'd come, anyhow, even if they'd only seen an old lady 'way too old to flirt with them. Anthony and Dick evidently considered this a sly sally, for they laughed one bar in three-four time.
Would they come again soon?
"Oh, yes."
Gloria would be _aw_fully sorry!
"Good-by----"
"Good-by----"
Smiles!
Smiles!
Bang!
Two disconsolate young men walking down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza in the direction of the elevator.
A LADY'S LEGS
Behind Maury Noble's attractive indolence, his irrelevance and his easy mockery, lay a surprising and relentless maturity of purpose. His intention, as he stated it in college, had been to use three years in travel, three years in utter leisure--and then to become immensely rich as quickly as possible.
His three years of travel were over. He had accomplished the globe with an intensity and curiosity that in any one else would have seemed pedantic, without redeeming spontaneity, almost the self-editing of a human Baedeker; but, in this case, it assumed an air of mysterious purpose and significant design--as though Maury Noble were some predestined anti-Christ, urged by a preordination to go everywhere there was to go along the earth and to see all the billions of humans who bred and wept and slew each other here and there upon it.
Back in America, he was sallying into the search for amusement with the same consistent absorption. He who had never taken more than a few cocktails or a pint of wine at a sitting, taught himself to drink as he would have taught himself Greek--like Greek it would be the gateway to a wealth of new sensations, new psychic states, new reactions in joy or misery.
His habits were a matter for esoteric speculation. He had three rooms in a bachelor apartment on Forty-forth street, but he was seldom to be found there. The telephone girl had received the most positive instructions that no one should even have his ear without first giving a name to be passed upon. She had a list of half a dozen people to whom he was never at home, and of the same number to whom he was always at home. Foremost on the latter list were Anthony Patch and Richard Caramel.