s in hotel-building which had covered five years and as
many squares with large showy erections, utterly beyond the needs of the
community, yet each superior in size and adornment to its predecessor.
It struck him as being the one evidence of an abiding faith in the
future of the metropolis that he had seen in nothing else. As he entered
its frescoed hall that afternoon he was suddenly reminded, by its
challenging opulency, of the bank he had just quitted, without knowing
that the bank had really furnished its capital and its original design.
The gilded bar-rooms, flashing with mirrors and cut glass; the saloons,
with their desert expanse of Turkey carpet and oasis of clustered divans
and gilded tables; the great dining-room, with porphyry columns, and
walls and ceilings shining with allegory--all these things which had
attracted his youthful wonder without distracting his correct simplicity
of taste he now began to comprehend. It was the bank's money "at work."
In the clatter of dishes in the dining-room he even seemed to hear again
the chinking of coin.

It was a short cut to his apartments to pass through a smaller public
sitting-room popularly known as "Flirtation Camp," where eight or ten
couples generally found refuge on chairs and settees by the windows,
half concealed by heavy curtains. But the occupants were by no means
youthful spinsters or bachelors; they were generally married women,
guests of the hotel, receiving other people's husbands whose wives were
"in the States," or responsible middle-aged leaders of the town. In
the elaborate toilettes of the women, as compared with the less formal
business suits of the men, there was an odd mingling of the social
attitude with perhaps more mysterious confidences. The idle gossip about
them had never affected Barker; rather he had that innate respect for
the secrets of others which is as inseparable from simplicity as it is
from high breeding, and he scarcely glanced at the different couples in
his progress through the room. He did not even notice a rather striking
and handsome woman, who, surrounded by two or three admirers, yet looked
up at Barker as he passed with self-conscious lids as if seeking a
return of her glance. But he moved on abstractedly, and only stopped
when he suddenly saw the familiar skirt of his wife at a further window,
and halted before it.

"Oh, it's YOU," said Mrs. Barker, with a half-nervous, half-impatient
laugh. "Why, I thought you'd cer