Laure raised her arms, she swayed forward into Pierce’s embrace, and they melted into the throng.  The girl could dance; she seemed to float in cadence with the music; she became one with her partner and answered his every impulse.  Never before had she seemed so utterly and so completely to embody the spirit of pleasure; she was ardent, alive, she pulsated with enjoyment; her breath was warm, her dark, fragrant hair brushed Phillips’ cheek; her olive face was slightly flushed; and her eyes, uplifted to his, were glowing.  They voiced adoration, abandon, surrender.

The music ended with a crash; a shout, a storm of applause followed; then the dancers swarmed to the bar, bearing Pierce and his companion with them.  Laure was panting.  She clung fiercely, jealously, to Phillips’ arm.

“Dance with me again.  Again!  I never knew what it was—­” She trembled with a vibrant ecstasy.

Drinks were set before them.  The girl spurned hers, but absent-mindedly pocketed the pasteboard check that went with it.  While yet Pierce’s throat was warm from the spirits there began the opening measures of a languorous waltz and the crowd swept into motion again.  There was no refusing the invitation of that music.

Later in the evening Phillips found Tom and Jerry; his color was deeper than usual, his eyes were unnaturally bright.

“I’m obliged to you,” he told them, “but I’ve taken a job as weigher with Miller & Best.  Good luck, and—­I hope you strike it rich.”

When he had gone Tom shook his head.  His face was clouded with regret and, too, with a vague expression of surprise.

“Too bad,” he said.  “I didn’t think he was that kind.”

“Sure!” Jerry agreed.  “I thought he’d make good.”

CHAPTER XX

Morris Best’s new partner was a square gambler, so called.  People there were who sneered at this description and considered it a contradiction as absurd as a square circle or an elliptical cube.  An elementary knowledge of the principles of geometry and of the retail liquor business proved the non-existence of such a thing as a straight crook, so they maintained.  But be that as it may, Ben Miller certainly differed from the usual run of sporting-men, and he professed peculiar ideas regarding the conduct of his trade.  Those ideas were almost puritanical in their nature.  Proprietorship of recreation centers similar to the Rialto had bred in Mr. Miller a profound distrust of women as a sex and of his own ability successfully to deal with them; in consequence, he refused to tolerate their presence in his immediate vicinity.  That they were valuable, nay, necessary, ingredients in the success of an enterprise such as the present one he well knew—­Miller was, above all, a business man—­but in making his deal with Best he had insisted positively that none of the latter’s song-birds were ever to enter the front saloon.  That room, Miller maintained, was to be his own, and he proposed to exercise dominion over it.  As for the gambling-hall, that of necessity was neutral territory and be reluctantly consented to permit the girls to patronize it so long as they behaved themselves.  For his part, he yielded all responsibility over the theater, and what went on therein, to Best.  He agreed to stay out of it.