ow at the same time?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes, of course."

Von Barwig breathed a sigh of relief. "She is not angry," he thought.
"And it will very soon be to-morrow!"

Chapter Twenty

As Von Barwig walked down Fifth Avenue on his way home to his lodgings
in Houston Street he could not help contrasting his present happy
existence with the miserably hopeless state in which he had found
himself on his first arrival in New York. "And it is to her, Miss
Stanton, that I owe all this blessedness. I am a changed man," he said
to himself, almost gaily, "I live, I enjoy, for to-morrow I shall see
her again. To live that one hour of restful blessedness," he thought,
"is well worth the bare existence of the other twenty-three." His
friends felt the change, too. They all knew that something had
happened, that something had entered the life of the old professor and
changed it, but not one of them attempted to pry into his secret.

"_Ma foi_," said Pinac, "he shall tell himself if he wants to. If not,
he shall not!"

Fico's reply was characteristic of that Italian's sunny disposition,
and it inverted a familiar saying.

"What the hell we care, so long as he is happy," he said.

Poons loved Von Barwig as a son, but the best of sons are self-centred
when they are in love; and Poons saw nothing.

Jenny was silent, she felt that she had lost her dear professor, but
with that spirit of sacrifice of which woman alone is capable, she
resigned her place in his heart to another. Be it said to her credit
there was not a jealous pang, not a moment of envy, nothing but
mournful regret and sweet resignation to the inevitable. As a mother
gives her son to another woman in marriage, so did Jenny give up Von
Barwig; to whom she knew not, nor did she seek to know.

His secret was sacred to all his friends, all, save one, and this
solitary exception led to a slight change in the Houston Street
establishment. It came about as follows:

"When a man comes home with orchids pinned to his coat," confided Mrs.
Mangenborn to her friend Miss Husted, "it looks as if it was only a
question of time when he would move uptown into more elegant
apartments. Orchids in winter only goes with blue diamonds and
yellowbacks!"

Miss Husted shook her head. "Move upstairs more likely than uptown,"
replied that lady regretfully. "Why, the poor old gentleman don't even
get enough to eat. You mark my word for it, some day he's going to
kee