though the bells called and
called. The moonlight was not more clear and untouched of baleful fire
than Myra's sweet eyes looking up at him, and now he was walking the wet
pavement of the great metropolis, with the clang and grind of cars all
about him, on his way to meet a woman whose life was spent in simulating
acts as destructive as Myra's had been serene and trustful. At the
moment he saw his own life as a thread in some mysterious drama.

"To what does it lead?" he asked, as he drew under the overhanging
portal of the great hotel where the star made her home. It was to the
man of the West a splendid place. Its builders had been lavish of highly
colored marbles and mosaics, spendthrift of light and gilding; on every
side shone the signs and seals of predatory wealth. Its walls were like
costly confectionery, its ornaments insolent, its waste criminal. Every
decorative feature was hot, restless, irreverent, and cruel, quite the
sort of avenue one might expect to find in his walk towards the
glittering woman of the false and ribald drama.

"She chose her abode with instinctive bad taste," he said, bitterly; and
again his weakness, his folly turned him cold; for with all his physical
powers he was shy to the point of fear.

He made a sober and singular spot in the blaze of the rotunda. So sombre
was his look, so intent his gaze. Youths in high hats and shining
shirt-fronts stood in groups conversing loudly, and in the resplendent
dining-hall bediamonded women and their sleek-haired, heavy-jewelled
partners were eating leisurely, attended by swarms of waiters so eager
they trod upon one another's feet.

The clerk eyed him in impassible silence as he took out his worn
card-case, saying: "Please send my card to Miss Merival."

"Miss Merival is not receiving any one this evening," the clerk
answered, with a tone which was like the slap of a wet glove in the
face.

Douglass faced him with a look which made him reflect. "You will let her
be the judge of that," he said, and his tone was that of one accustomed
to be obeyed.

The little man bowed. "Oh, certainly, Mr. Douglass, but as she left
orders--"

When the boy with his card had disappeared into the candy-colored
distances, the playwright found himself again studying the face of his
incomprehensible sorceress, who looked down upon him even at that moment
from a bulletin-board on the hotel wall, Oriental, savage, and
sullen--sad, too, as though alone in her solit