About one o'clock
Fred Sloane and Phoebe Column were old friends ; Axia and Amory new ones . But strange things are prepared even in the dead of night , and the unusual , which lurks least in the cafe , home of the prosaic and inevitable , was preparing to spoil for him the waning romance of Broadway . The way it took was so inexpressibly terrible , so unbelievable , that afterward he never thought of it as experience ; but it was a scene from a misty tragedy , played far behind the veil , and that it meant something definite he knew . About one o'clock they moved to Maxim 's , and two found them in Deviniere 's . Sloane had been drinking consecutively and was in a state of unsteady exhilaration , but Amory was quite tiresomely sober ; they had run across none of those ancient , corrupt buyers of champagne who usually assisted their New York parties . They were just through dancing and were making their way back to their chairs when Amory became aware that some one at a near-by table was looking at him . He turned and glanced casually ... a middle-aged man dressed in a brown sack suit , it was , sitting a little apart at a table by himself and watching their party intently .