by at least a decade, but she had adopted the wild coiffure from a Salome make-up she had admired. It was, as the cashier was explaining to a startled customer, an "Elluva-fight" she was having with "the boss." She apparently liked anything of an "elluva" variety, in fact, she never was so happy as when rowing. Besides she thought it effective. So finishing the manager, she ordered the jabbering busboys, waiters, and orchestra leader about with a sovereign and well-dissembled anger, and succeeded most thoroughly in drowning out the tenor of expansive chest. And all through this performance—by no means on the bill—the black eyes gauged its publicity value, for nothing pays so well as rudeness and a nicely-calculated degree of insanity. At least the faces of commuters in yokel quest of Bohemia so attested.
MacAllister made his way through the blue wisps of smoke, and between the little tables, with their spaghetti dishes and inverted siphons of carmine wine.
"Your exit-cue, Josef, here's a gentleman to see me."
Nettled by the emphasis she placed on the seventh word, and its implication, the manager beat a hasty retreat, almost as beside himself as an impresario over some famous star's caprice.
MacAllister dropped lazily into a chair at her table, giving as always the impression of the utmost economy of word and effort. When action was not insistent, his tall figure seemed to drawl through life but—never, even when motionless, those deft, alabaster-finished fingers of his. In the dark picture he made these were ever the highlights.
