"I know," said Fancy; "that's Mrs. Page."
"H'm! Funny, every time I see her she's with a different man. She's pretty gay, that woman."
"Is she? You're a cad to tell of it."
"Why? Do you know her?"
She scorned to answer.
On a Sunday night soon after, Gay invited her to dinner at Carminetti's. She accepted, never having gone to the place, which was then in the height of its prestige, a resort for the most uproarious spirits of the town.
It was down near the harbor front, a region of warehouses, factories, freight tracks and desecrated, melancholy buildings, disheveled and squalid, that Mr. Summer took her. He pushed open the door to let upon her a wave of light frivolity and the mingled odor of Italian oil and wine permeated by an under-current of fried food. The tables were all filled, some with six or eight diners at one board, and by the counter or bar, which ran all along one side of the room, there were at least a dozen persons waiting for seats. Gay walked up to bald-headed "Dave," the patron, who in his shirt-sleeves was superintending the confusion, keeping an eye ready for rising disorder. After a quick colloquy, he beckoned to Fancy, who followed him down between the gay groups to a table in a corner. It was just being deserted by a short young hoodlum, with a pink and green striped sweater, accompanied by a girl several inches too tall for him, dressed in a soiled buff raglan and a triumphal hat.
"Here we are," said Gay; "we're in luck to get a table at all, to-night. But I gave Dave a four-bit piece and that fixed it."
Fancy sat down and looked about. "It is pretty gay, isn't it? It looks as if it were going to be fun."
"Oh, you wait till nine o'clock," Gay boasted wisely. "They're not warmed up to it yet. The 'Dago Red' hasn't got in its work. There'll be something doing, after a while."