“There are dull-green lattices, little gateways with roses, white enamel with cute little diamond panes of glass for windows, inviting bowers of artificial flowers and dim yellow lights.  It makes you feel like a sybarite just to see it.  It’s a cosmetic Arcadia for that fundamental feminine longing for beauty.

“Well, first there are the little dressing-rooms, each with a bed, a dresser and mirror, and everything in such good taste.  After you leave them you go to a white, steamy room and there they bake you.  It’s a long process of gentle showers, hot and cold, after that, and massage.

“I thought I was through.  But it seems that I had only just started.  There was a battery of white manicure tables, and then the hairdressers and the artists who lay on these complexions—­ what do you think of mine?  I can’t begin to tell all the secrets of the curls and puffs, and reinforcements, hygienic rolls, transformations, fluffy puffers, and all that, or of the complexions.  Why, you can choose a complexion, like wall-paper or upholstery.  They can make you as pale as a sickly heroine or they can make you as yellow as a bathing girl.  There is nothing they can’t do.  I asked just for fun.  I could have come out as dusky as a gipsy.

“They tried electrolysis on my eyebrows, and one attendant suggested a hypodermic injection of perfume.  Ever hear of that?  She thought ‘new mown hay’ was the best to saturate the skin with.  Then another suggested, as long as I had chosen this moonbeam make-up, that perhaps I’d like a couple of dimples.  They could make them permanent or lasting only a few hours.  I declined.  But there is nothing so wild that they haven’t either thought of themselves or imported from Paris or somewhere else.  I heard them discussing someone who wanted odd eyes—­made by pouring in certain liquids.  They don’t seem to care how they affect sight, hearing, skin, or health.  It is decoration run mad.”

“How about the people there?” asked Kennedy.

“Oh, I must tell you about that.  There’s so much to tell, I hardly know where to begin—­or stop.  I saw some flashy people.  You know one customer attracts her friends and so on.  There is every class there from the demi-monde up to actresses and really truly society.  And they have things for all prices from the comparatively cheap to the most extravagant.  They’re very accommodating and, in a way, democratic.”

“Did it seem—­straight?” asked Kennedy.

“On the surface, yes, as far as I could judge.  But I’ll have to go back again for that.  For instance, there was one thing that seemed queer to me.  I had finished the steaming and freezing and was resting.  A maid brought a tray of cigarettes, those dainty little thin ones with gilt tips.  There seemed to be several kinds.  I managed to try some of them.  One at least I know was doped, although I only had a whiff of it.  I think after they got to know you they’d serve anything from a cocktail in a teacup to the latest fads.  I am sure that I saw one woman taking some veronal in her coffee.”