d guilelessly.

"Ask you? No, I don't think so."

"Oh; I had an idea you might care to know where Keen & Co. were to be
found."

"_That_," said Gatewood firmly, "is foolish."

"I'll write the address for you, anyway," rejoined Kerns, scribbling it
and handing the card to his friend.

Then he went down the stairs, several at a time, eased in conscience,
satisfied that he had done his duty by a friend he cared enough for to
breakfast with.

"Of course," he ruminated as he crawled into a hansom and lay back
buried in meditation--"of course there may be nothing in this Keen & Co.
business. But it will stir him up and set him thinking; and the longer
Keen & Co. take to hunt up an imaginary lady that doesn't exist, the
more anxious and impatient poor old Jack Gatewood will become, until
he'll catch the fever and go cantering about with that one fixed idea in
his head. And," added Kerns softly, "no New Yorker in his right mind can
go galloping through these five boroughs very long before he's roped,
tied, and marked by the 'only girl in the world'--the _only_ girl--if
you don't care to turn around and look at another million girls
precisely like her. O Lord!--precisely like her!"

Here was a nice exhorter to incite others to matrimony.

CHAPTER II

Meanwhile, Gatewood was walking along Fifth Avenue, more or less soothed
by the May sunshine. First, he went to his hatters, looked at straw
hats, didn't like them, protested, and bought one, wishing he had
strength of mind enough to wear it home. But he hadn't. Then he entered
the huge white marble palace of his jeweler, left his watch to be
regulated, caught a glimpse of a girl whose hair and neck resembled the
hair and neck of his ideal, sidled around until he discovered that she
was chewing gum, and backed off, with a bitter smile, into the avenue
once more.

Every day for years he had had glimpses of girls whose hair, hands,
figures, eyes, hats, carriage, resembled the features required by his
ideal; there always was something wrong somewhere. And, as he strolled
moodily, a curious feeling of despair seized him--something that, even
in his most sentimental moments, even amid the most unexpected
disappointment, he had never before experienced.

"I do want to love _somebody_!" he found himself saying half aloud; "I
want to marry; I--" He turned to look after three pretty children with
their maids--"I want several like those--several!--seven--ten--I don't
ca