Geary told them how he had spent the afternoon promenading Kearney and Market streets and just where he had gone to get his cocktail and his cigar.  “Ah,” he added, “you ought to have seen Ida Wade and Bessie Laguna.  Oh, Ida was rigged up to beat the band; honestly her hat was as broad across as that.  You know there’s no use talking, she’s an awfully handsome girl.”

A discussion arose over the girl’s virtue.  Ellis, Geary, and young Haight maintained that Ida was only fast; Vandover, however, had his doubts.

“For that matter,” said Ellis after a while, “I like Bessie Laguna a good deal better than I do Ida.”

“Ah, yes,” retorted young Haight, “you like Bessie Laguna too much anyhow.”

Young Haight had a theory that one should never care in any way for that kind of a girl nor become at all intimate with her.

“The matter of liking her or not liking her,” he said, “ought not to enter into the question at all.  You are both of you out for a good time and that’s all; you have a jolly flirtation with her for an hour or two, and you never see her again.  That’s the way it ought to be!  This idea of getting intimate with that sort of a piece, and trying to get her to care for you, is all wrong.”

“Oh,” said Vandover deprecatingly, “you take all the pleasure out of it; where does your good time come in if you don’t at least pretend that you like the girl and try to make her like you?”

“But don’t you see,” answered Haight, “what a dreadful thing it would be if a girl like that came to care for you seriously?  It isn’t the same as if it were a girl of your own class.”

“Ah, Dolly, you’ve got a bean,” muttered Ellis, sipping his whisky.

Meanwhile, the Imperial had been filling up; at about eleven the theatres were over, and now the barroom was full of men.  They came in by twos and threes and sometimes even by noisy parties of a half dozen or more.  The white swing doors of the main entrance flapped back and forth continually, letting out into the street puffs of tepid air tainted with the smell of alcohol.  The men entered and ordered their drinks, and leaning their elbows upon the bar continued the conversation they had begun outside.  Afterward they passed over to the lunch counter and helped themselves to a plate of stewed tripe or potato salad, eating it in a secluded corner, leaning over so as not to stain their coats.  There was a continual clinking of glasses and popping of corks, and at every instant the cash-register clucked and rang its bell.

Between the barroom and the other part of the house was a door hung with blue plush curtains, looped back; the waiters constantly passed back and forth through this, carrying plates of oysters, smoking rarebits, tiny glasses of liqueurs, and goblets of cigars.