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 surrounds himself by friends and family even as you and I. He might frequent the Drake or the Blackstone for his pleasure, also, but it would be too suggestive of business. He, too, requires his leisure; so here he was with his friends at the Flamingo Feather.

Maybe a dozen knew what was on that night; not more than that, Jerry told me. He vanished, Jerry did, after we'd been there an hour, leaving me alone with ladies.

I danced, to mighty good music, with a crowned queen of Tudorish bodice, modified by electric lights on the sleeves; with a green-robed girl of red hair with amber lights on her comb; with a white-shouldered Cleopatra, lithe and soft in my arms.

I danced again with Cleopatra and, after midnight, a couple of times more and was having a better time with each encore. Also I was getting acclimated to the diverting atmosphere of that ball. Its manners, of course, were various and, as I explained to myself the different developments, each masker made for himself a personal interpretation of his rôle according to his costume; consequently I witnessed the Puritanical portrayed in contrast with the piratical