She was one of the things he fumbled for on the typewriter--one of the
city products born of the tinpan bacchanal of the cabarets. A sort of
frontispiece for an Irving Berlin ballad. The caricature of savagery that
danced to the caricature of music from the jazz bands. The newspaper man
smiled. Looking at her he understood her. But she would not fit into the
typewritten phrases.

"Wilson Avenue," he thought, as he walked beside her chatter. "The wise,
brazen little virgins who shimmy and toddle, but never pay the fiddler.
She's it. Selling her ankles for a glass of pop and her eyes for a fox
trot. Unhuman little piece. A cross between a macaw and a marionette."

* * * * *

Thus, the newspaper man thinking and the flapper flapping, they came
together to a cabaret in the neighborhood. The orchestra filled the place
with confetti of sound. Laughter, shouts, a leap of voices, blazing
lights, perspiring waiters, faces and hats thrusting vivid stencils
through the uncoiling tinsel of tobacco smoke.

On the dance floor bodies hugging, toddling, shimmying; faces fastened
together; eyes glassy with incongruous ecstasies.

The newspaper man ordered two drinks of moonshine and let the scene blur
before him like a colored picture puzzle out of focus. Above the music he
heard the childishly strident voice of the flapper:

"Where you been hiding yourself? I thought you and I were cookies. Well,
that's the way with you Johns. But there's enough to go around, you can
bet. Say boy! I met the classiest John the other evening in front of the