walked briskly out into Fifth Avenue, he was thinking of
another grandmother on whom he had called a few days before. She was a
haughty old dame, but she was browbeaten by her maid. Her grandchildren
were brought in now and then to kiss her hand. They were glad to get
away. They had no real need of her. They had no hopes or fears to
confide. So in spite of her magnificence and her millions, she was a
lonely soul.

Snow had fallen the night before, and was now melting in the streets, but
the sky was very blue above the tall buildings. Christmas was not far
away, and as Richard went up-town the crowd surged with him, meeting the
crowd that was coming down.

He had a fancy to lunch at a little place on Thirty-third Street, where
they served a soup with noodles that was in itself a hearty meal. In the
days when money had been scarce the little German cafe had furnished many
a feast. Now and then he and his mother had come together, and had talked
of how, when their ship came in, they would dine at the big hotel around
the corner.

And now that his ship was in, and he could afford the big hotel, it had
no charms. He hated the women dawdling in its alleys, the men smoking in
its corridors, the whole idle crowd, lunching in acres of table-crowded
space.

So he set as his goal the clean little restaurant, and swung along toward
it with something of his old boyish sense of elation.

And then a strange thing happened. For the first time in months he found
his heart marking time to the tune of the song which old Ben's hoofs had
beaten out of the roads as they made their way up into the hills--

"I think she was the most beautiful lady,
That ever was in the West Country----"

He was even humming it under his breath, unheard amid the hum and stir of
the crowded city street.

The shops on either side of him displayed in their low windows a wealth
of tempting things. Rugs with a sheen like the bloom of a
peach--alabaster in curved and carved bowls and vases, old prints in dull
gilt frames--furniture following the lines of Florentine
elaborateness--his eyes took in all the color and glow, though he rarely
stopped for a closer view.

In front of one broad window, however, he hesitated. The opening of the
door had spilled into the frosty air of this alien city the scent of the
Orient--the fragrance of incense--of spicy perfumed woods.

In the window a jade god sat high on a teakwood pedestal. A string of
scarlet bea