pe of seeing some face he had known in the days
before the world had gone drunk on blood. One familiar face.

Of course he would never forget--at any rate, not the girl whose courage
had made possible this hour. Those chaps, scared off temporarily, might
have returned. What had become of her? He was always seeing her lovely
face in the shadows, now tender, now resolute, now mocking. Doubtless he
thought of her constantly because his freedom of action was limited.
He hadn't diversion enough. Books and fiddling, these carried him but
halfway through the boredom. Where was she? Daily he had called her by
telephone; no answer. The Jap shook his head; the slangy boy in the lift
shook his.

She was a thoroughbred, even if she had been born of middle-class
parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle class. A homeless, countryless
derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no
longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The
final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still
thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle class! He was no better than a
troglodyte, set down in a new wilderness.

He heard the curtain rings slither on the pole. Believing the intruder
to be Kuroki he turned belligerently. And there she stood--the girl
herself! The poise of her reminded him of the Winged Victory in
the Louvre. Where there had been a cup of champagne in his veins
circumstance now poured a magnum.

"You!" he cried.

"What has happened? Where are you going in those clothes?" demanded
Kitty.

"I am running away--for an hour or so."

"But you must not! The risks--after all the trouble we've had to help
you!"

"I shall be perfectly safe, for you are going with me. Aren't you
my guardian angel? Well, rather! The two of us--people, lights, shop
windows! Perfectly splendiferous! Honestly, now, where's the harm?" He
approached her rapidly as he spoke, and before the spell of him could be
shaken off Kitty found her hands imprisoned in his. "Please! I've been
so damnably bored. The two of us in the streets, among the crowds!
No one will dare touch us. Can't you see? And then--I say, this is
ripping!--we'll have dinner together here. I will play for you on the
old Amati. Please!"

The fire of him communicated to the combustibles in Kitty's soul. A
wild, reckless irony besieged her. This adventure would be exactly what
she needed; it would sweep clear the fog separating one side of her
b