The place was one vast eruption of tiny electric lights, and the lights of “the profession,” and the demi-monde.  Virtue and its antithesis disguised alike in silk attire and pearl collars, rubbed elbows unconcernedly among the papier-mache grottos; the cascades foamed with municipal water, waiters sweated and scurried, lights winked and glimmered, and the music and electric fans annoyed nobody.

In its usual grotto Quest found the usual group, was welcomed automatically, sat down at one of the tables, and gave his order.

Artists, newspaper men, critics, and writers predominated.  There was also a “journalist” doing “brilliant” space work on the Sun.  He had been doing it nearly a month and he was only twenty-one.  It was his first job.  Ambition tickled his ribs; Fame leaned familiarly over his shoulder; Destiny made eyes at him.  His name was Bunn.

There was also a smooth-shaven, tired-eyed, little man who had written a volume on Welsh-rarebits and now drew cartoons.  His function was to torment Bunn; and Bunn never knew it.

A critic rose from the busy company and departed, to add lustre to his paper and a nail in the coffin of the only really clever play in town.

“Kismet,” observed little Dill, who did the daily cartoon for the Post, “no critic would be a critic if he could be a fifth-rate anybody else—­or,” he added, looking at Bunn, “even a journalist.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?” asked Bunn complacently. “I intend to do art criticism for the Herald.”

“What’s the objection to my getting a job on it, too?” inquired Quest, setting his empty glass aside and signalling the waiter for a re-order.  He expected surprise and congratulation.

Somebody said, “You take a job!” so impudently that Quest reddened and turned, showing his narrow, defective teeth.

“It’s my choice that I haven’t taken one,” he snarled.  “Did you think otherwise?”

“Don’t get huffy, Stuyve,” said a large, placid, fat novelist, whose financial success with mediocre fiction had made him no warmer favourite among his brothers.

A row of artists glanced up and coldly continued their salad, their Vandyck beards all wagging in unison.

“I want you to understand,” said Quest, leaning both elbows offensively on Dill’s table, “that the job I ask for I expect to get.”

“You might have expected that once,” said the cool young man who had spoken before.

“And I do now!” retorted Quest, raising his voice.  “Why not?”

Somebody said:  “You can furnish good copy, all right, Quest; you do it every day that you’re not working.”

Quest, astonished and taken aback at such a universal revelation of the contempt in which he seemed to be held, found no reply ready—­nothing at hand except another glass of whiskey and soda.

Minute after minute he sat there among them, sullen, silent, wincing, nursing his chagrin in deepening wrath and bitterness; and his clouding mind perceived in the rebuke nothing that he had ever done to deserve it.