Then she met up with her friends at the St. DuBarry.
You watch the waiter bring another round of drinks and you perceive that the evening is well under way and that the peak of the twenty-four hours is being disputatiously approached.
It appears that Perinique’s is a swell place to dine, but that the cheese is bad. The cheese is good right here at the St. DuBarry, but they don’t know how to toast the biscuits. At the Grünewurst the waiters are poor. At Max’s the soup is always cold. The mural decorations at the Prince Eitel are so gloomy they give you a chill.
Despair settles down on the scene. There seems to be no likelihood that there will be any dinner at all anywhere. In the absence, however, of that kind of good cheer, another kind is spread on the table when the inquiry is flung down whether or not the way in which Jim looked at Dora last night has been generally observed.
You conclude that poor, dear, innocent Dora ought not to have been looked at in that way. 158 You were hasty. Nobody is innocent in the Mandarin Tea Room of the St. DuBarry, when not there. Dora, you soon learn, deserves to be looked at in any and all ways. It’s not for her that we’re worried. It’s for Jim.
At the name of Jim, Margaret begins to look uncomfortable and helpless. She sinks lower and lower into her chair; and says nothing; and keeps on saying nothing; and seems likely to drown in silence; but her friends start in to rescue her. You can’t help seeing some of the life-lines as they are thrown out.
“If I were you, Margaret, and my husband behaved to me as Jim is behaving to you, I’d——”
“When you married Jim, Margaret, you were the prettiest——”
“No wonder Dora’s husband divorced her.”