Page:The Mystery of Central Park.djvu/123

Rh cut across Twenty-fourth Street and went into the Hoffman House bar-room. Without stopping he went through to the office, where he wrote and sent a note to Dido, asking her to take dinner with him that evening. Then he walked back to the bar to congratulate himself—after the manner of his sex—for taking the road, whose way, he thought, led to success.

Richard stood before the famous bar and marvelled how daylight seemed to rob the room of half its fascination. The men of the world, the men of fashion, the outlandish youth of dudedom, the be-diamonded actor and bejewelled men whose modes of life would ill bear investigation, had all fled with the night.

The Flemish tapestry looked dull, and the exquisite Eve was a less glaring white, and seemed to have lost expression in a new-found modesty, and the nymphs and satyr