Bangs nodded, vaguely. His brown eyes were alternately on the bride and on his chum and partner, her brother. He was conscious of an odd depression, of an emotion, new and poignant, that made him understand the tears of Barbara's women friends. Under the influence of this, he spoke oracularly:
"Weddings are beastly depressing things. What the public wants to see is something cheerful!"
Epstein nodded in his turn. His thoughts, too, were busy. Like many of those around him, he was mentally reducing the spectacle he was watching to terms that he could understand. A wedding conducted on this scale, he estimated, probably represented a total cost of about ten thousand dollars. But what was that to a bride with thirty or forty millions? It was strange her family had left them all to her and none to the boy, even if the boy had been a little wild. But the boy was all right now. He'd make his own fortune if life and women and the devil would let him alone. He had made a good start already. A few more successes like "The Man Above" would make Epstein forget several failures he had already and unwisely produced this season. If he could get Bangs and Devon to start work at once, on another good play—
Epstein closed his eyes, lent his Jewish soul to the spell of the music, and dreamed on, of Art and Dollars, of Dollars and Art.
A little later, in the automobile that whirled him and Epstein out to the wedding-reception at Devon House, Rodney Bangs briefly developed the wedding theme.
"I suppose the reason why women cry at weddings and men feel glum is that they know what the bride's in for," he remarked, gloomily.
Epstein grunted. "You an' me is bachelors," he reminded the momentarily cynical youth. "Ve should vorry!"
"What I'm worrying about is Laurie," Bangs admitted.
Epstein turned to him with awakened interest.
"Vell," he demanded, "what about Laurie? He's all right, ain't he?"