intense earnestness, broke in upon his gnawing
loneliness. A lovely vision, a very Rose of Life's Garden!

"By Jove!" he murmured, as with a new-born craft he lingered for
a moment before a window with an "art" display, only to watch the
receding form of the unknown beauty, whose single glance had left
him standing there spellbound.

There was an exquisite artist proof of a romantic scene upon the
Danube displayed in the place of honor, a view of one of the grandly
witching defiles where the mighty stream immortalized by Strauss
breaks out of the smiling Austrian plains, dashing along into the
Iron Gates of gallant Hungary.

He could not, as yet, tell what manner of woman she might be, but
his spirit burned within him as he felt the lingering spell of
those dark, witching eyes, for they had rested upon his own, in an
instant, unguarded glance of sympathy.

Mechanically following on, Clayton noted the refinement of the
daintily cut dark dress, veiling a form of ravishing symmetry.
There was a single red rose in the Polish toque, and that one touch
of color guided him as he followed the gracefully gliding unknown
beauty.

Strangely stirred at heart, he marked the distinction of the lady's
bearing, her well-gloved hand, clasping a music roll--and even
the natty bottines had not escaped him. He saw all this before he
was aware that he had passed on beyond University Place, with no
other purpose than to gaze into those sweetly earnest eyes again.
"Twenty-three--no, twenty-five," his keen perception told him, by
right of the supple and imperially moulded form of womanly ripeness.
And he wondered vaguely what daughter of the gods this might be--what
heiress of the graces of the laughter-loving goddesses of old!

He quickened his pace in the narrow space between University Place
and Broadway, fearful that he would lose that dark-eyed vision in
the human breakers at the Broadway curve. But his grasp mechanically
tightened upon his treasure, his right hand clutched the pistol
butt more firmly, as his cheek reddened with an involuntary blush.

He had seen just such faces on the Prater in sparkling Vienna, and
in the antique streets of Buda-Pesth on the one summer European
run, snatched from the Moloch worship of the Almighty Dollar!

Such eyes, now soft and dreamy, then lit up with a merry challenge,
had rested on the handsome young American tourist in the vaulted
halls of the Wiener Cafe, where the Waltz King's witching