And I would much--- much rather--" "No, you wouldn't! I have spoken.

Come along!" Before Max could resist he was swept across the wide roadway, round a corner, and through what looked to him like the entrance to a theatre.
There were many people gathered about this entrance: men in evening dress, men in shabby, insignificant clothes, women in varying types of costume.

Max would have lingered to study the little crowd, but Blake looked upon his hesitancy with distrust, and still retaining the grip upon his shoulder, half led, half pushed him through a short passage straight into the dancing-hall, where on the instant his ears were assailed by a flood of joyous sound in the form of a rhythmic, swinging waltz--his eyes blinked before the flood of light to which the Parisian pins his faith for public pleasures--and his nostrils were assailed by a penetrating smell of scent and smoke.

Dazed and a little frightened he drew back against a wall, overwhelmed by the atmosphere.

Superficially there was little astonishing in the Bal Tabarin; but to the uninitiated being with wide eyes it seemed in very truth the gay world, with its stirring music, its walls flaunting their mirrors and their paintings, its galleries with their palms and railed-in boxes, and beneath--subtly suggestive adjunct--- the bars, with their countless bottles of champagne, bottles of every conceivable size built up in serried rows as though Venus would raise an altar to Bacchus.
Leaning back against the wall, Max surveyed the scene, fascinated and confused.