There were peaches which had come from South Africa (they had cost
ten dollars apiece). There were bunches of Hamburg grapes, dark
purple and bursting fat, which had been grown in a hot-house,
wrapped in paper bags. There were nectarines and plums, and
pomegranates and persimmons from Japan, and later on, little dishes
of plump strawberries-raised in pots. There were quail which had
come from Egypt, and a wonderful thing called "crab-flake a la
Dewey," cooked in a chafing-dish, and served with mushrooms that had
been grown in the tunnels of abandoned mines in Michigan. There was
lettuce raised by electric light, and lima beans that had come from
Porto Eico, and artichokes brought from France at a cost of one
dollar each.--And all these extraordinary viands were washed down by
eight or nine varieties of wines, from the cellar of a man who had
made collecting them a fad for the last thirty years, who had a
vineyard in France for the growing of his own champagne, and kept
twenty thousand quarts of claret in storage all the time--and
procured his Rhine wine from the cellar of the German Emperor, at a
cost of twenty-five dollars a quart!

There were twelve people at dinner, and afterward they made two
tables for bridge, leaving Charlie Carter to talk to Alice, and Mrs.
Winnie to devote herself to Montague, according to her promise.
"Everybody likes to see my house," she said. "Would you?" And she
led the way from the dining-room into the great conservatory, which
formed a central court extending to the roof of the building. She
pressed a button, and a soft radiance streamed down from above, in
the midst of which Mrs. Winnie stood, with her shimmering jewels a
very goddess of the fire.

The conservatory was a place in which he could have spent the