flowers, and the music. Nay,
the flowers might droop, the lights might go out, the music cease and
dawn come--she and he would dance recklessly on--on--on!

A sense of picturesqueness--his own picturesqueness--made him walk
rather theatrically as he passed through the groups of humble onlookers
outside the picket fence. Many of these turned to stare at the belated
guest, and William was unconscious of neither their low estate nor his
own quality as a patrician man-about-town in almost perfectly fitting
evening dress. A faint, cold smile was allowed to appear upon his lips,
and a fragment from a story he had read came momentarily to his mind....
"Through the gaping crowds the young Augustan noble was borne down
from the Palatine, scornful in his jeweled litter...."

An admiring murmur reached William's ear.

"OH, oh, honey! Look attem long-tail suit! 'At's a rich boy, honey!"

"Yessum, SO! Bet he got his pockets pack' full o' twenty-dolluh gol'
pieces right iss minute!"

"You right, honey!"

William allowed the coldness of his faint smile to increase to become
scornful. These poor sidewalk creatures little knew what seethed inside
the alabaster of the young Augustan noble! What was it to THEM that this
was Miss Pratt's last night and that he intended to dance and dance with
her, on and on?

Almost sternly he left these squalid lives behind him and passed to the
festal gateway.

Upon one of the posts of that gateway there rested the elbow of a
contemplative man, middleaged or a little worse. Of all persons having
pleasure or business within the bright inclosure, he was, that evening,
the least important; being merely the background parent who paid the
bills. However, even this unconsidered elder shared a thought in common
with the Augustan now approaching: Mr. Parcher had just been thinking
that there was true romance in the scene before him.

But what Mr. Parcher contemplated as romance arose from the fact that
these young people were dancing on a spot where their great-grandfathers
had scalped Indians. Music was made for them by descendants, it might
well be, of Romulus, of Messalina, of Benvenuto Cellini, and, around
behind the house, waiting to serve the dancers with light food
and drink, lounged and gossiped grandchildren of the Congo, only
a generation or so removed from dances for which a chance stranger
furnished both the occasion and the refreshments. Such, in brief, was
Mr. Parcher's peculiar view of