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Rh done. The dining-room lies through that archway just between the two."

He walked away, passing along the length of the room and down three steps into a narrower, darker bar beyond, where the shadows hid him. But his voice still reached me: "It's on the back street, this bar," he called. "This is for the hoi polloi. We shall want a chucker out.... Here's the private door leading to the upstairs dining-room we'll let out for banquets. We'll have our own bedrooms and sitting-room on the first floor too...."

His voice roared on; I heard, but did not answer; I had not moved an inch from my place against the swing-doors. He had not, of course, the faintest idea what was passing through my mind at the moment; and, had I told him, he would only have laughed good-naturedly and talked of the money we should make. The fact was, however, that the whole of my early up-bringing just then came at me with a concentrated driving-force which made the venture seem absolutely impossible.

"We'll call this one the House of Commons," he bawled delightedly; "and that one--the front bar--the House of Lords. We shall take 250 dollars a day easily!"

The shock, the contrast, the exaggerated effect of entering a saloon for the first time in my life, especially with the added possibility of shortly becoming its proprietor, were natural enough. My unworldliness, even at twenty-one, was abnormal. Not only had I never smoked tobacco nor touched alcohol of any description, but I had never yet set foot inside a theatre; a race-course I had never seen, nor held a billiard cue, nor touched a card. I did not know one card from another. Any game that might involve betting or gambling was anathema. In other ways, too, I had been sheltered to the point of ignorance. I had never even danced. To hold a young woman round the waist was not alone immodest but worse than immodest.

This peculiarly sheltered up-bringing, this protected Rh