He followed, laughing at her excitement, and in a few minutes they found the door of their lodge and slipped in.
Gethryn lighted a cigarette and began to unstrap his field glasses.
“Take these, Yvonne,” he said, handing them to her while he adjusted her own tiny gold ones.
Yvonne’s cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled under the little mask, as she leaned over the velvet railing and gazed at the bewildering spectacle below. Great puffs of hot, perfumed air bore the crash of two orchestras to their ears, mixed with the distant clatter and whirl of the dancers, and the shouts and cries of the maskers.
At the end of the floor, screened by banks of palms, sat the musicians, and round about, rising tier upon tier, the glittering boxes were filled with the elite of the demimonde, who ogled and gossiped and sighed, entirely content with the material and social barriers which separate those who dance for ten francs from those who look on for a hundred.
But there were others there who should not by any means be confounded with their sisters of the “half-world.”
The Faubourg St Germain, the Champs Elysées, and the Parc Monceau were possibly represented among those muffled and disguised beauties, who began the evening with their fans so handy in case of need. Ah, well—now they lay their fans down quite out of reach in case of emergency, and who shall say if disappointment lurks under these dainty dominoes, that there is so little to bring a blush to modest cheeks—alas! few emergencies.
And you over there—you of the “American Colony,” who are tossed like shuttlecocks in the social whirl, you, in your well-appointed masks and silks, it is all very new and exciting—yes, but why should you come? American women, brought up to think clean thoughts and see with innocent eyes, to exact a respectful homage from men and enjoy a personal dignity and independence unknown to women anywhere else—why do you want to come here? Do you not know that the foundations of that liberty which makes you envied in the old world are laid in the respect and confidence of men? Undermine that, become wise and cynical, learn the meaning of doubtful words and gestures whose significance you never need have suspected, meet men on the same ground where they may any day meet fast women of the continent, and fix at that moment on your free limbs the same chains which corrupt society has forged for the women of Europe.
Yvonne leaned back in her box with a little gasp.
“But I can’t make out anyone at all,” she said; “it’s all a great, sparkling sea of color.”