The emancipation of the women is marked by the decline of the
chaperon, and it was not clear under whose protection the young girls
had come. Beneath double rows of ruche-rose feet passed, and the soft
glow of lamps shaded with large leaves of pale glass bathed the
women's flesh in endless half tints; the reflected light of copper
shades flushed the blonde hair on Lady Helen's neck to auroral
fervencies.

In one group a fat man with white hair and faded blue eyes talked to
Mrs. Bentham and Lewis Seymour. A visit to the Haymarket Theatre
being arranged, he said--

"May I hope to be permitted to form one of the party?"

Harding overheard the remark. He said, "It is difficult to believe,
but I assure you that that Mr. Senbrook was one of the greatest Don
Juans that ever lived."

"We have in this room Don Juan in youth, middle age, and old
age--Mike Fletcher, Lewis Seymour, and Mr. Senbrook."

"Did Seymour, that fellow with the wide hips, ever have success with
women? How fat he has grown!"

"Rather; [Footnote: See _A Modern Lover_.] don't you know his story?
He came up to London with a few pounds. When we knew him first he was
starving in Lambeth. You remember, Thompson, the day he stood us a
lunch? He had just taken a decorative panel to a picture-dealer's,
for which he had received a few pounds, and he told us how he had met
a lady (there's the lady, the woman with the white hair, Mrs.