"We're not nice people," said Persis, "but we do."
"It's all we do do," said the lady of the embonpoint, whose first name by now he had gleaned as Winifred.
Forbes was surprised to hear himself speaking as if to old acquaintance. "When I was in San Francisco, six years or so ago, slumming parties were taking it up along the 'Barbary Coast.' And on my way East just now I read an editorial about its rage in New York, but I didn't believe it."
"It's awful," said the little man. "People have gone stark mad over it. The mayor ought to stop it."
"Oh, Willie, don't be a prude," said Persis. "You know it's healthier than playing bridge all day and all night."
"And much less expensive," said the white-haired one.
"It's sickening," Willie insisted. "It's unfit for a decent woman."
"Thanks!" said Persis, with a tone of zinc.
The little man made haste with an apology. "I don't mean you, my dear, of course; you dance it harmlessly enough; but--well, I don't like to see you at it, that's all."
"Your own mother is learning it," said Winifred.
"Oh, mother!" Willie gasped. "I gave her up long ago."
Ten Eyck intervened. Forbes remembered now that he was always intervening between extremists in the club quarrels in Manila.
"What difference does it make?" he said. "All dancing is impure to some people. The waltz and polka used to be considered bad enough to get you kicked out of the churches. The turkey-trot is only vulgar when vulgar people dance it, and they'd be vulgar anyway, anywhere. The trot has set people to jigging again. That's one good, wholesome thing. For several years you couldn't get people to dance at all. Now they're at it morning, noon, and night."
"The police ought to stop it, I tell you," Willie insisted, with a peevishness that was like a dash of vinegar. "I hate to see it."
"Then don't come along, my dear," Persis answered, with a glint of temper.
Forbes did not like that "my dear." It might mean nothing, but it might mean everything.
When the final curtain came down like a guillotine on the play there was a general uprising, a sort of slow panic to escape from this finished place and move on to the next event--by street-car to a welsh rabbit in a kitchenette, or by motor to a restaurant of pretense.
