Finally the more merciful guests began to go home, leaving the dregs behind. Young men who would doze and make mistakes at the counting houses the next day, lingered as if it were the last night of earth.
There was torture for RoBards in Immy’s zest, in the look of her eyes as she stared up into the unspeakable gaze of some notorious rake; and in the welding of her sacred body to his in a matrimonial embrace as they waltzed round and round giddily. Yet how much bitterer a wound it was to see her transfer herself for the next dance to another man and pour up into his fatuous eyes the same look of helpless passion!
The performance repeated in a third man’s bosom was confusion. RoBards had either to turn on his heel or commit murder. And he really could not murder all the young men whom Immy maddened. Indeed, he was not sufficiently satisfied with his first murder to repeat the experiment.
Yet Immy kept her head through it all; flirted, plotted, showed the ideal Arabian hospitality in her dances. But no one made a fool of her.
Keith, however, was overwhelmed. It was his first experience with unlimited champagne, and he had thought it his duty to force it on his guests and join them in every glass. It was disgraceful to leave a heeltap. When he could no longer stand up or dance, he had to be carried upstairs, moaning, “It’s a shame to deshert guesh.”
A boy and drunk! And weeping, not for being drunk but for not being the last man drunk!
The world was ready for the Deluge! The American nation was rotten to the core and would crumble at the first test.
This dance at the RoBards home was typical, rather more respectable than many. All over town dances were held in dance halls where the middle classes went through the same gyrations with less grace, and in the vile dens of the Five Points where all were swine.
Patty was too tired to speak or listen when the last guest was gone. She could hardly keep awake long enough to get out of her gown.
She sighed: “I’m old! I’m ready to admit it. I’m glad I’m old. I’m never going to try to pretend again! I don’t want ever to be so tired again. If anybody wakes me to-morrow I’ll commit murder. In God’s name, will you never get those stay-laces untied?”