It was
rich laughter, cadenced and deep and loud, but so musically
modulated that, though it might never seem impromptu, even old
Carson Tinker had once declared that he liked to listen to it almost
as much as Potter did.
Old Carson Tinker was listening to it now, as Canby discovered,
after a lisping Japanese had announced him at the doorway of a
cream-coloured Louis Sixteenth salon: an exquisite apartment,
delicately personalized here and there by luxurious fragilities
which would have done charmingly, on the stage, for a marquise's
boudoir. Old Tinker, in evening dress, sat uncomfortably,
sideways, upon the edge of a wicker and brocade "chaise lounge,"
finishing a tiny glass of chartreuse, while Talbot Potter, in
the middle of the room, took leave of a second guest who had
been dining with him.
Potter was concluding the rendition of hilarity which had
penetrated to the outer hall, and, merely waving the playwright
toward Tinker, swept the same gesture upward to complete it by
resting a cordial hand upon the departing guest's shoulder. This
personage, a wasp-figured, languorous youth, with pale
plastered hair over a talcum face, flicked his host lightly upon
the breast with a pair of white gloves.
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