verything combines
to keep them so; the very hollowness of society shields them. They are
the loveliest of the human race. But perhaps the rest have to pay too
much for them."

"For such an exquisite creature as Miss Vance," said March, "we couldn't
pay too much."

A wild laughing cry suddenly broke upon the air at the street-crossing in
front of them. A girl's voice called out: "Run, run, Jen! The copper is
after you." A woman's figure rushed stumbling across the way and into the
shadow of the houses, pursued by a burly policeman.

"Ah, but if that's part of the price?"

They went along fallen from the gay spirit of their talk into a silence
which he broke with a sigh. "Can that poor wretch and the radiant girl we
left yonder really belong to the same system of things? How impossible
each makes the other seem!"

VI.

Mrs. Horn believed in the world and in society and its unwritten
constitution devoutly, and she tolerated her niece's benevolent
activities as she tolerated her aesthetic sympathies because these
things, however oddly, were tolerated--even encouraged--by society; and
they gave Margaret a charm. They made her originality interesting. Mrs.
Horn did not intend that they should ever go so far as to make her
troublesome; and it was with a sense of this abeyant authority of her
aunt's that the girl asked her approval of her proposed call upon the
Dryfooses. She explained as well as she could the social destitution of
these opulent people, and she had of course to name Beaton as the source
of her knowledge concerning them.

"Did Mr. Beaton suggest your calling on them?"

"No; he rather discouraged it."

"And why do you think you ought to go in this particular instance? New
York is full of people who don't know anybody."

Margaret laughed. "I suppose it's like any other charity: you reach the
cases you know of. The others you say you can't help, and you try to
ignore them."

"It's very romantic," said Mrs. Horn. "I hope you've counted the cost;
all the possible consequences."

Margaret knew that her aunt had in mind their common experience with the
Leightons, whom, to give their common conscience peace, she had called
upon with her aunt's cards and excuses, and an invitation for her
Thursdays, somewhat too late to make the visit seem a welcome to New
York. She was so coldly received, not so much for herself as in her
quality of envoy, that her aunt experienced all the comfort which
vicarious