As yet Chicago was exceedingly slow socially.

Its movements were, as has been said, more or less bovine and phlegmatic.

To rush in with something utterly brilliant and pyrotechnic was to take notable chances.

The more cautious members of Chicago society, even if they did not attend, would hear, and then would come ultimate comment and decision.
The function began with a reception at four, which lasted until six-thirty, and this was followed by a dance at nine, with music by a famous stringed orchestra of Chicago, a musical programme by artists of considerable importance, and a gorgeous supper from eleven until one in a Chinese fairyland of lights, at small tables filling three of the ground-floor rooms.

As an added fillip to the occasion Cowperwood had hung, not only the important pictures which he had purchased abroad, but a new one--a particularly brilliant Gerome, then in the heyday of his exotic popularity--a picture of nude odalisques of the harem, idling beside the highly colored stone marquetry of an oriental bath.
It was more or less "loose" art for Chicago, shocking to the uninitiated, though harmless enough to the illuminati; but it gave a touch of color to the art-gallery which the latter needed.