I pass through a long hallway, the modern assassins around me, with closed eyes, looking like wax figures. A smiling moustachioed man pulls a heavy velvet curtain aside and I enter.
Suddenly my heart begins to thump against the sides of my chest, the blood seems to rush to the head, and there is a sensation of fullness, as if the skull would be burst asunder at the base. There is a roaring in the ears and strange lights, blurred and indistinct - pass before the eyes. In a moment all this wears off, leaving a feeling of delicious langour and the idea that one is rising from the ground and floating in space.

From the extremity beyond, where the women are located, comes the sound of singing and of laughter and the rhythmic patter of feet upon oriental kilims. The ladies have been indulging on their own account and the noise they make rouses the men from their dreams. Three or four jump up from the floor in a single bound and, siezed by some dance mania, begin capering away as for very life. They jig here and there, they twine and twist and writhe and wriggle.