The Can bore the pair to a fretful halt under the newest electric lights on River Street.  “The La Boheme” read the dazzling sign.  And Winona passed into her new life.  She was feeling strangely young as she relinquished her cloak to a uniformed maid.  She stood amid exotic splendour, and was no longer herself but some regal creature in the Sunday supplement of a great city paper.  She had always wanted to be a girl, but had not known how—­and now at thirty-five how easy it seemed!  She preceded Wilbur to a table for two, impressive with crystal and damask, and was seated by an obsequious foreigner who brought to the act a manner that had never before in Newbern distinguished this service—­when it had been performed at all.

Other tables about them were already filled with Newbern’s elect, thrilled as was Winona, concealing it as ably as she, with the town’s new distinction.  Hardly had food been ordered when a hidden orchestra blared and the oblong polished space of which their own table formed part of the border was thronged with dancing couples.  Winona glowingly surrendered to the evil spell.  Wilbur merely looked an invitation and she was dancing as one who had always danced.  She tapped him with her fan as he led her back to the table where their first course had arrived.  She trifled daintily with strange food, composing a sentence for her journal:  “The whole scene was of a gayety hitherto unparalleled in the annals of our little town.”

There was more food, interspersed with more dancing.  Later Winona, after many sidewise perkings of her brown head, discovered Merle and Patricia Whipple at a neighbouring table.  She nodded and smiled effusively to them.  Patricia returned her greeting gayly; Merle removed a shining cigarette holder of remarkable length and bowed, but did not smile.  He seemed to be aloof and gloomy.

“He’s got a lot on his mind,” said Wilbur, studying his brother respectfully.

Merle’s plenteous hair, like his cigarette holder, was longer than is commonly worn by his sex, and marked by a certain not infelicitous disorder.  He had trouble with a luxuriant lock of it that persistently fell across his pale brow.  With a weary, world-worn gesture he absently brushed this back into place from moment to moment.  His thick eyeglasses were suspended by a narrow ribbon of black satin.  His collar was low and his loosely tied cravat was flowing of line.

“Out of condition,” said Wilbur, expertly.  “Looks pasty.”

“But very, very distinguished,” supplemented Winona.

Patricia Whipple now came to their table with something like a dance step, though the music was stilled.  She had been away from Newbern for two years.

“Europe and Washington,” she hurriedly explained as Wilbur held a chair for her, “and glad to get back—­but I’m off again.  Nurse!  Begin the course next week in New York—­learning how to soothe the bed of pain.  I know I’m a rattlepate, but that’s what I’m going to do.  All of us mad about the war.”