In a moment or two more they had reached the basement floor, which was their destination.
Opposite the elevators on this floor was a small reception room or parlour, and here Senator Norman's other guests were awaiting him--Rockwell, Murray, Mayor Black, Alicia, and Alicia's father.
To the last-named gentleman Merriam was immediately presented. He was a stoutish, jovial man of fifty or so, bald of pate and humorous of eye, and the amused particularity with which he surveyed Merriam and the gusto with which he addressed him as "Senator" showed both that Alicia had performed her task of enlightening him and that she had been right as to the attitude he would take.
"Splendid!" he whispered to Merriam. "You would have fooled me all right," and he beamed delightedly.
Alicia gave him only a minute. "They are ready," she said. "We are to go right in. You are to walk with me." (This last to Merriam.)
In a moment, therefore, Merriam found himself escorting Alicia down a sort of central aisle among the tables of the Peacock Cabaret, behind an excessively urbane head waiter, conscious that the rest of his guests were making a more or less imposing procession after them, and intensely conscious of suspended conversation throughout the great restaurant and of countless curious eyes staring across rosebuds and water bottles at himself.
"Say something to me," whispered Alicia. "You mustn't look self-conscious."
Merriam glanced at her and realised for the first time that evening her vivid, vigorous, peony-like beauty.
"What can I say," he asked smiling, "except 'How lovely you are'?" and he wondered why it was so easy to say this to Alicia when he had been unable to say it to Mollie June.
"Bravo, Boy Senator!" applauded Alicia, and then they reached the haven of that alcove which Rockwell had promised.