“Come On In, as the latest of the New York revues is called, is much like all the others.  It contains the same procession of specialty-mongers, the same cacophony of rag-time, the same gangway out into the audience which refreshes tired business men with a thrilling, worm’s-eye view of dancing girls’ knees au naturel.  And up and down this straight and narrow pathway of the chorus there is the customary parade of the same haughty beauties of Broadway.  Only in one item is there a deviation from the usual formula:  the costumes.  For several years past, the revues at this theater (the Columbian) have been caparisoned with the decadent colors and bizarre designs of the exotic Mr. Grenville Melton.  I knew there had been a change for the better as soon as I saw the first number, for these dresses have the stimulating quality of a healthy and vigorous imagination, as well as a vivid decorative value.  They are exceedingly smart, of course, or else they would never do for a Broadway revue, but they are also alive, while those of Mr. Melton were invariably sickly.  Curiously enough, the name of the new costume designer has a special interest for Chicago.  She is Doris Dane, who participated in The Girl Up-stairs at the Globe.  Miss Dane’s stage experience here was brief, but nevertheless her striking success in her new profession will probably cause the formation of a large and enthusiastic ‘I-knew-her-when’ club.”

Jimmy expected to produce an effect with it.  But what he did produce exceeded his wildest anticipations.  The thing came out in the three o’clock edition, and before he left the office that afternoon (he stayed a little late, it is true, and it wasn’t his “At home” to press agents either) he had received, over the telephone, six invitations to dinner; three of them for that night.

He declined the first two on the ground of an enormous press of work incident to his fresh return from a fortnight in New York.  But when Violet called up and said, with a reference to a previous engagement that was shamelessly fictitious: 

“Jimmy, you haven’t forgotten you’re dining with us to-night, have you?  It’s just us, so you needn’t dress,” he answered: 

“Oh, no, I’ve got it down on my calendar all right.  Seven-thirty?”

Violet snickered and said:  “You wait!—­Or rather, don’t wait.  Make it seven.”

Jimmy was glad to be let off that extra half-hour of waiting.  He was impatient for the encounter with Violet—­a state of mind most rare with him.  He meant to wring all the pleasure out of it he could by way of compensating himself for that other dinner when Violet had decided that all Rodney’s most intimate friends ought really to be told what Rose had done, in order that they might be scrupulous enough in avoiding subjects which he might take as a reference to his disgrace.

Violet said, the moment he appeared in the drawing-room doorway, “John made me swear not to let you tell me a word until he came in.  He’s simply burbling.  He’s out in the pantry now mixing some extra-special cocktails—­with his own hands, you know—­to celebrate the event.  But there’s one thing he won’t mind your telling me, and that’s her address.  I’m simply perishing to write her a note and tell her how glad we are.”