The large drawing-room overlooking the Hudson was filled almost to capacity with that strange mixture of humanity which Mrs. Pett chiefly affected.  She prided herself on the Bohemian element in her parties, and had become during the past two years a human drag-net, scooping Genius from its hiding-place and bringing it into the open.  At different spots in the room stood the six resident geniuses to whose presence in the home Mr. Pett had such strong objections, and in addition to these she had collected so many more of a like breed from the environs of Washington Square that the air was clamorous with the hoarse cries of futurist painters, esoteric Buddhists, vers libre poets, interior decorators, and stage reformers, sifted in among the more conventional members of society who had come to listen to them.  Men with new religions drank tea with women with new hats.  Apostles of Free Love expounded their doctrines to persons who had been practising them for years without realising it.  All over the room throats were being strained and minds broadened.

Mr. Chester, standing near the door with Ann, eyed the assemblage with the genial contempt of a large dog for a voluble pack of small ones.  He was a massive, weather-beaten man, who looked very like Ann in some ways and would have looked more like her but for the misfortune of having had some of his face clawed away by an irritable jaguar with whom he had had a difference some years back in the jungles of Peru.

“Do you like this sort of thing?” he asked.

“I don’t mind it,” said Ann.

“Well, I shall be very sorry to leave you, Ann, but I’m glad I’m pulling out of here this evening.  Who are all these people?”

Ann surveyed the gathering.

“That’s Ernest Wisden, the playwright, over there, talking to Lora Delane Porter, the feminist writer.  That’s Clara What’s-her-name, the sculptor, with the bobbed hair.  Next to her—­”

Mr. Chester cut short the catalogue with a stifled yawn.

“Where’s old Pete?  Doesn’t he come to these jamborees?”

Ann laughed.

“Poor uncle Peter!  If he gets back from the office before these people leave, he will sneak up to his room and stay there till it’s safe to come out.  The last time I made him come to one of these parties he was pounced on by a woman who talked to him for an hour about the morality of Finance and seemed to think that millionaires were the scum of the earth.”

“He never would stand up for himself.”  Mr. Chester’s gaze hovered about the room, and paused.  “Who’s that fellow?  I believe I’ve seen him before somewhere.”