At 9 o'clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced upon the floor with a lady on his arm. As the Loreleys was her hair golden. Her "yes" was softened to a "yah," but its quality of assent was patent to the most Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed, and—she smiled into the eyes of Kid Mullaly. And then, as the two stood in the middle of the waxed floor, the thing happened to prevent which many lamps are burning nightly in many studies and libraries. Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a green silk skirt, under the nom de guerre of "Liz." Her eyes were hard and blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most surprisingly, she cried out one oath—the Kid's own favorite oath—and in his own deep voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went frantically to pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the waiter—made good as far as the length of her knife blade and the strength of her arm permitted. And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation—or was it self-annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on the natural branch?

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