Fischer, unusually grave and funereal-looking in his dinner clothes and black tie, followed her gesture with thoughtful eyes. Everything that was ugly in the stretching arms of the city seemed softened, shrouded and bejewelled. Even the sounds, the rattle and roar of the overhead railways, the clanging of the electric car bells, the shrieking of the sirens upon the river, seemed somehow to have lost their harsh note, to have become the human cry of the great live city, awaking and stretching itself for the night.
"I agree with you," he said. "You dine at the Ritz-Carlton and you might be in Paris. You dine here, and one knows that you are in America."
"Yet even here we have become increasingly luxurious," Pamela remarked, looking around. "The glass and linen upon the tables are quite French; those shaded lights are exquisite. That little band, too, was playing at the Ritz three years ago. I am sure that the maitre d'hotel who brought us to our table was once at the Cafe de Paris."
"Money would draw all those things from Europe even to the Sahara," Fischer observed, "so long as there were plenty of it. But millions could not buy our dining table in the clouds."
"A little effort of the imagination, fortunately," Pamela laughed, looking upwards. "There are stars, but no clouds."
"I guess one of them is going to slip down to the next table before long," Van Teyl observed, with a little movement of his head.
They all three turned around and looked at the wonderful bank of pink roses within a few feet of them.
"One of the opera women, I daresay," the young man continued. "They are rather fond of this place."
Pamela leaned forward. Fischer was watching the streets below; Only a short distance away was a huge newspaper building, flaring with lights. The pavements fringing it were thronged with a little stationary crowd. A row of motor-bicycles was in waiting. A night edition of the paper was almost due.
"Mr. Fischer," she asked, "what about that news?"