adventure."

"It was such a welcome adventure after leaving you! She told
practically the whole of it. She had been to a party and her host was
too drunk to take her home. She couldn't get a taxi, so started to
walk. After I had fed the little pig I took her home. Of course I had
no intention of mentioning it to any one, but I hardly feel that I am
compromising my honor as a gentleman!"

"But will Society permit this state of things to last? New York! It
seems incredible."

"Heaven knows. It might as well try to curb the lightning as these
little fools. Their own children, if they have any, will probably be
worse."

"I wonder. Reformed rakes are not generally indulgent to adventurous
youth. There will probably be a violent revulsion to the rigors of the
nineteenth century."

"Hope so. Thank Heaven we can get out of this."

They left the table. As he followed her down the long room and noted
the many eyes that focussed on the regal and beautiful figure in its
long wrap of white velvet and fox he set his lips grimly. Another
ordeal before him. For a moment he wished that he had fallen in love
with a woman incapable of focussing eyes. He hated being conspicuous
as he hated poverty and ugliness and failure and death. Then he gave
an impatient sigh. If he could win her he cared little if the entire
town followed her every time she appeared on the street. And she had
been very sweet after that odious flapper had taken herself off. He
had ceased to feel at arm's length.

XXII

They entered the box during the nuptial hymn. Farrar, almost supine in
the arms of the seducer, was singing with the voluptuous abandon that
makes this scene the most explicit in modern opera. She had sung it a
thousand times, but she was still the beautiful young creature exalted by
passion, and her voice seemed to have regained its pristine freshness.
She had done many things to irritate New Yorkers, but in this scene,
whether they forgave her or not, they surrendered; and those to whom love
and passion were lost memories felt a dim resurgence under that golden
tide.

Clavering had no desire to surrender. In fact he endeavored to close his
ears. He had received a cold douche and a hot one in the course of the
past hour, and he felt that his equilibrium was satisfactorily
established. He had forgotten to warn Madame Zattiany of the step at the
front of the box, down which so many novices had stumbled, but she h