f New York. But I
should not wonder if he had once a soft spot in his heart. He is better
than she is."

It was still early, lacked half an hour of midnight, and the night was
before them. Some one proposed the Conventional. "Yes," said Carmen;
"all come to our box." The Van Dams would go, Miss Tavish, the Chesneys;
the suggestion was a relief to everybody. Only Mr. Henderson pleaded
important papers that must have his attention that night. Edith said
that she was too tired, but that her desertion must not break up the
party.

"Then you will excuse me also," said Jack, a little shade of
disappointment in his face.

"No, no," said Edith, quickly; "you can drop me on the way. Go, by all
means, Jack."

"Do you really want me to go, dear?" said Jack, aside.

"Why of course; I want you to be happy."

And Jack recalled the loving look that accompanied these words, later
on, as he sat in the Henderson box at the Conventional, between Carmen
and Miss Tavish, and saw, through the slight haze of smoke, beyond the
orchestra, the praiseworthy efforts of the Montana Kicker, who had
just returned with the imprimatur of Paris, to relieve the ennui of the
modern world.

The complex affair we call the world requires a great variety of people
to keep it going. At one o'clock in the morning Carmen and our friend
Mr. Delancy and Miss Tavish were doing their part. Edith lay awake
listening for Jack's return. And in an alley off Rivington Street a
young girl, pretty once, unknown to fortune but not to fame, was about
to render the last service she could to the world by leaving it.

The impartial historian scarcely knows how to distribute his pathos. By
the electric light (and that is the modern light) gayety is almost as
pathetic as suffering. Before the Montana girl hit upon the happy device
that gave her notoriety, her feet, whose every twinkle now was worth a
gold eagle, had trod a thorny path. There was a fortune now in the whirl
of her illusory robes, but any day--such are the whims of fashion--she
might be wandering again, sick at heart, about the great city, knocking
at the side doors of variety shows for any engagement that would give
her a pittance of a few dollars a week. How long had Carmen waited on
the social outskirts; and now she had come into her kingdom, was she
anything but a tinsel queen? Even Henderson, the great Henderson, did
the friends of his youth respect him? had he public esteem? Carmen used
to cut out t