"Doesn't everybody dance?"
"Then how did you break your leg?"
"I don't care to go."
"Strange!" Mr. Wharton helped himself to a goblet of wine, appearing to heap the liquor above the edge of the glass. "Now, if I were sober I could understand how you might prefer these 'pappy guys' to me, for nobody likes me then, but I'm agreeably pickled. I'm just like everybody you'll be likely to meet at this time of night. Merkle won't take you anywhere, for he's full of distilled water and has a directors' meeting at ten. I overflow with spirits and have a noontide engagement with an Ostermoor."
"Why don't you ask Miss Demorest? She came with you?"
Wharton sighed hopelessly. "Something queer about that Jane. D'you know what made us so late? She went to mass on the way down."
"Mass? At that hour?"
"It was a special midnight service conducted for actors. I sat in the taxi and waited. It did me a lot of good."
Some time later Merkle returned to find Bob still animatedly talking; catching Lorelei's eye, he signified a desire to speak with her, but she found it difficult to escape from the intoxicated young man at her side. At last, however, she succeeded, and joined her supper companion at the farther edge of the fountain, where the tireless cupids still poured water from the cornucopias.
Merkle was watching his friend's son with a frown.