e.

"Here you are, sir," said the chauffeur, opening the door.

King fancied the man had made a mistake in the number. The house was
blazing with lights, upstairs and down; there was an unmistakable air of
revelry about it; faintly the music of a new dance tune, violin and
piccolo and piano, crept out into the night. Above the music he could
hear gay voices, muffled by door and window and wall.

King was of a mind to go back to the hotel. He had counted on the
Gaynors alone, not on this sort of thing. But also, most of all, he had
counted on Gloria, and his hesitation was brief. He jumped down and,
leading his bear cub by its new chain, went up the steps.

A housemaid came to the door, opened it wide for him, saw the cub
against his leg, and screamed.

"Why, what on earth is the matter, Frieda?" said some one.

It was Gloria passing through the front hallway with a worshipful youth.
Gloria came to the door, the youth at her heels, looking over her
shoulder.

"Oh!" cried Gloria. King knew then in a flash that she had not expected
him, that probably because he had never answered her letter she had
forgotten all about it. Unconsciously he stiffened--his old gesture
before a woman.

But now Gloria came running out to him, her two hands offered, her eyes
alight with pleasure.

"You did come," she said gladly.

Gloria's escort, obviously holding himself to be privileged through
virtue of his briefly temporary office, thrust himself along in her
wake. Him King did not notice; King saw only Gloria. As of old she set
his pulse stirring restlessly with her sparkling, vivid loveliness.
To-night was Gloria's night; she was eighteen and queen of the world.

"And----Oh, look!" She let her hands remain in his but her eyes were
all for the little brown bundle of fur at King's feet, that began now to
whine and pull back at its chain. "My birthday present!"

Just now Mark King would have given anything he could think of to have
that bear cub back in the woods where it belonged. He hadn't had time to
analyse impulses; he didn't know why all of a sudden his gift seemed out
of place. As he let Gloria's fingers slip through his he looked at the
young fellow, a boy of Gloria's own age, in the doorway. Perhaps the
full evening dress had something to do with King's new attitude toward
his pet. But now as Gloria, a little timid and holding her skirts back
and yet clearly delighted, flashed him her look of understanding and
gratitu