true. Her eyes
could be so soft and lovely and appealing; they were wonderful eyes,
but they could blaze as well. And she was right. He was selfish and
conventional and intolerant. That is, he had been. He wished he could
forget her eyes. In all ways possible to a man of his type he had
tried to forget, but forgetting was beyond his power. Jock had loved
half a dozen women and this afternoon he was to be married to his last
love. Were he on Jock's order he might have married. He wasn't on
Jock's order.

Reaching his club, he started to go up the steps, then turned and
walked away. To go in would provoke inquiry as to why he was not at
the wedding. He took out his watch. It was twenty minutes of the hour
set for the ceremony. He had intended to go, but--Well, he had
forgotten, and was glad of it. He loathed weddings.

As he reached the building in which was his apartment he again
hesitated and again walked on. An unaccountable impulse led him in the
direction of the house, a few blocks away, in which his friend was to
be married, and as he neared it he crossed the street and in the
darkness of the late afternoon looked with eyes, half mocking, half
amazed, at the long line of limousines which stretched from one end of
the block to the other. At the corner he stopped. For some minutes he
stood looking at the little group of people who made effort to press
closer to the entrance of the awning which stretched from door to
curbing, then turned to go, when he felt a hand touch him lightly on
the arm.

"If you will come up to the top of the steps you can see much better,"
he heard a voice say. "I've seen almost everybody go in. I just ran
down to tell you."

CHAPTER IV

Turning, Van Landing looked into the little face upraised to his, then
lifted his hat. She was so enveloped in the big coat which came to her
heels that for half a moment he could not tell whether she was ten or
twenty. Then he smiled.

"Thank you," he said. "I don't know that I care to see. I don't know
why I stopped."

"Oh, but it is perfectly grand, seeing them is! You can see everything
up there"--a little bare hand was waved behind her in the direction of
the porch--"and nothing down here. And you looked like you wanted to
see. There have been kings and queens, and princes and princesses, and
dukes and duchesses, and sirs, and--" She looked up. "What's the lady
name for sir? 'Tisn't siress, is it?"

"I believe not." Van Landing laughed