Acquaintanceships are struck up; criticism of the ill may proceed audibly. This audience is blase and cynical. They do not respond with a single thrill. The hero and the villain knock over the stove again on the fifth round of their nightly grind without eliciting a single gasp, a fine man leans his head on his folded arms, draws a long sigh and kisses to sleep. Presently he begins to snore. The excellent pianist looks disparagingly over his shoulder, but plays on never missing a beat.

The Audience.
A food part of the audience is readily identified and classified. There are taxi chauffeurs, and reformers off duty at midnight, and a row of waiters from various all-night lunches of the neighborhood filling one corner of the hall with comment in the tongue of Socrates. There is the pretty cashier of a nearby restaurant identifiable by a yellow pencil stuck in her black hair. Another young woman, resolute and trimly dressed, causes a dozen necks to crane when she enters. You wonder what she is doing here, until presently she produces a pencil and a block of paper and begins to make sketches. She evidently represents art and the new woman and emancipation.

Probably she has a protector in the background. The habitues sigh and sink back in boredom. They are used to being sketched. 