Joan looked about her. Mostly the tables were occupied by a man and
a woman, but at a few were four and six of both in equal numbers,
and here and there parties of men. At one or two, women with
eccentric heads sat together in curious garments which had the
appearance of being made at home on the spur of the moment. They
smoked between mouthfuls and laughed without restraint. Some of the
men wore longish hair and the double tie of those who wish to be
mistaken for dramatists. Others affected a poetic disarrangement of
collar, and fantastic beards. There were others who had wandered
over the border of middle age and who were bald and strangely
adipose, with mackerel eyes and unpleasant mouths. They were with
young girls, gaudily but shabbily dressed, shopgirls perhaps, or
artists' models or stenographers, who in dull and sordid lives
grappled any chance to obtain a square meal, even if it had to be
accessory to such companionship. The minority of men present was
made up of honest, clean, commonplace citizens who were there for a
good dinner in surroundings that offered a certain stimulus to the
imagination.

"Who are they all?" asked Joan, beating time with a finger to the
lilting tune which the little band had just begun, with obvious
enjoyment. "Adventurers, mostly, I imagine," replied Palgrave, not
unpleased to play Baedeker to a girl who was becoming more and more
attractive to him. "I mean people who live by their wits--writers,
illustrators, actors, newspaper men, with a smattering of Wall
Street brokers seeking a little mild diversion as we are, and
foreigners to whom this place has a sentimental interest because it
reminds them of home. Sophisticated children, most of them,
optimists with moments of hideous pessimism, enthusiasts at various