TURGIS SEES HER !$3

great teashop he had just left; and indeed it was;
another frontier outpost of the new age. Two Jews,
born in Poland but now American citizens, had talked
over cigars and coffee on the loggia of a crazy Spanish-
Italian-American villa, within sight of the Pacific, and
out of that talk (a very quiet talk, for one of the two
men was in considerable pain and knew that he was
dying inch by inch) there had sprouted this monster,
together with other monsters that had suddenly ap-
peared in New York, Paris, and Berlin. Across ten
thousand miles, those two men had seen the one-and-
sixpence in Turgis's pocket and, with a swift gesture,
resolving itself magically into steel and concrete and
carpets and velvet-coloured seats and pay-boxes, had set
in motion and diverted it to themselves.

He waited now to pay his one-and-sixpence, standing
in the queue at the Balcony entrance. It was only a
little after six and the Saturday night rush had hardly
begun, but soon there were at least a hundred of them
standing there. Near Turgis, on either side, the sexes
were neatly paired off. There were one or two middle-
aged women but no unaccompanied girl in sight in the
whole queue. The evening was not beginning too
well.

When at last they were admitted, they first walked
through an enormous entrance hall, richly tricked out
in chocolate and gold, illuminated by a huge central
candelabra, a vast bunch of russet gold globes. Foot-
men in chocolate and gold waved them towards the two
great marble balustrades, the wide staircase lit with
more russet gold globes, the prodigiously thick and
opulent chocolate carpets, into which their feet sank as
if they were the feet of archdukes and duchesses. Up