insurgency reigns and
finds expression, where existing conditions are denounced, where freedom
is verbally fought for and capital and conventions are vocally
annihilated. In some of them food is served at prices which astonished
his training at the expensive restaurants. There the musician and the
girl went, he as explorer, fastidiously critical, yet enduring what he
regarded as squalor and anarchy, for the new experience of feeling that
he was penetrating Bohemia.

She acted as guide, and since she knew the world of ease and the world
of necessity and could walk alike with the aristocratic and the
commonalty--and remain equally herself--she sat amused, watching him as
he watched the rest. The twinkle that sought to flash into her eye
flashed only in her mind, but the play of keen humor and wit quaintly
expressed sparkled through her conversation, so that when they were
together they laughed a great deal.

Acquaintanceship which is nourished in the sunlight of laughter blooms
rapidly into intimacy, and Paul Burton would have been surprised had he
known how often his eyes wakened into a tell-tale glow of delight and
admiration, and how easily any one looking on might have fallen into
the egregious error of construing his attitude into one distinctly
loverlike. All this while she continued to pique his curiosity by a
sustained reserve as to herself.

She spoke quite frankly of her failures to get employment, making
deliciously laughable stories out of disappointing and disheartening
experiences, but it was only in incidental comments that she referred to
things in the past which made him know that her life had once held in
abundance those things which it now lacked.

One day when Paul had selected with great care a mass of roses of a new
and particularly exotic variety to be sent to Loraine, the florist
inquired, "Will that be all today, Mr. Burton?"

The musician had nodded, then suddenly he said, "No, I think there is
something else I want." It suddenly came to him that he had never given
Marcia any sort of present. Of course she would have no use for a small
cart-load of expensive flowers. One had to send gifts of that sort to
Loraine, because she was herself so gorgeously expensive, but Marcia
might like some violets. Violets would look rather well on the blue suit
she most often wore. He was to meet her in a half-hour, though he had
not mentioned the appointment to Loraine. So he had the violets wrapped
up, fe