is still in the dangerous stage," he said.
"But I will go." He said this in a tone of desperation which amused them
all very much.

It was impossible for him to remain glum in the midst of the good cheer
of that luxurious little breakfast with the promise of a ride in the
park in prospect. A few moments later a young girl, Miss Fanny Cummings,
came in with a young man who looked like an actor, but was, in fact,
Hugh's college-mate and "advance man" for Helen, and together they went
down to the auto-car.

There was a well-defined sense of luxury in being in Helen Merival's
party. The attendants in the hotel were so genuinely eager to serve her,
and the carefully considered comfort of everything she possessed was
very attractive to a man like George Douglass, son of a village doctor,
who had toiled from childhood to earn every dollar he spent. To ride in
such swift and shining state with any one would have had extraordinary
interest, and to sit beside Helen in the comparative privacy of the rear
seat put a boyish glow of romance into his heart. Her buoyant and sunny
spirit reacted on his moody and supersensitive nature till his face
shone with pleasure. He forgot his bitter letter of the night before,
and for the moment work and worry were driven from his world. He entered
upon a dreamland--the city of menace disappeared.

The avenue was gay with promenaders and thick with carriages. Other
autos met them with cordial clamor of gongs, and now and then some
driver more lawless than Hugh dashed past them in reckless race towards
the park. The playwright had never seen so many of New York's glittering
carriages, and the growing arrogance of its wealth took on a new aspect
from his newly acquired viewpoint. Here were rapidly centring the great
leaders of art, of music, of finance. Here the social climbers were
clustering, eager to be great in a city of greatness. Here the chief
ones in literature and the drama must come as to a market-place, and
with this thought came a mighty uplift. "Surely success is now mine," he
thought, exultantly, "for here I sit the favored dramatist of this
wondrous woman."

There was little connected conversation--only short volleys of jests as
they whizzed along the splendid drives of the park--but Douglass needed
little more than Helen's shining face to put him at peace with all the
world. Each moment increased their intimacy.

He told her of his stern old father, a country doctor in the West,