"We'll get a bite to eat down in the Rathskeller," he suggested gaily.
"No, Joe, let's not. This is enough for one evening." She turned as if to start southward, toward home, but he seized her arm, laughing:
"Maybe it's enough for you, but it's not enough for me. Come on. Be a sport. You've been dodging me long enough."
"Dodging you?" She was all hurt surprise as he hurried her along.
Joe's method was improving. "Well, come along, then—if you don't want me to think so."
Mary Louise let it go at that. She came.
A revolving door that swept outward musty and yet alluring odours swept them inward. They descended a flight of winding steps to a subterranean anteroom of stone. Dim lights winked at them from stone niches and from a cleft in the rock to one side a prim little maid in a ruched white cap took Joe's hat. There should have been a troglodyte attendant, instead. On the other side of swinging glass doors was much clatter and laughter and the indistinct voice of a woman above a rhythmic strumming and the bleat of a saxophone. The transition to this other side was sudden and bewildering. The glimmer burst into a glare, the dim echo swelled into a roar as the door opened, and Joe stood blinking, asking for a table for two. As he threaded his way between tables, past careening waiters swinging aloft perilous trays, a girl in a crimson evening frock came wandering carelessly through the aisle toward him, her hands clasped behind her back, her eyes searching the crowd sitting about her. Her figure was short and pudgy and so violently compressed into her crimson gown that she seemed to be oozing out of a scanty chalice. She was singing a most provocative song and, catching sight of Joe as he struggled along, face uptilted, and, looking into his eyes most impudently, let him have the full import of her words.
Joe gave her a deliberate, knowing wink. With a careless shrug she moved away in search of more promising and sensitive material.
He passed, the toxine of gaiety mounting to his head, to a small table tucked into a remote corner, where the waiter was holding out a chair for him.
"Won't do, George," he said, refusing the proffered chair. "We can't be buried way back here. We aren't dead ones, you know."