for what we had gone through; but Miss
Hawthorne resolutely shook her head; and as there was nothing in the
world that would have induced me to stay without her, I shook my head,
too. It seemed to me I had known this girl all my life, so closely
does misfortune link one life to another. I had seen her for the first
time less than eight hours before; and yet I was confident that as many
years, under ordinary circumstances, would not have taught me her real
worth.

"Mrs. Hyphen-Bonds will never forgive me," said Hamilton dismally, "if
she hears that I've been the cause, indirectly and innocently, of
turning you away."

"Mrs. Hyphen-Bonds need never know," replied the girl, smiling
inscrutably. "In fact, it would be perfectly satisfactory and
agreeable to me if she never heard at all."

"I will call a conveyance for you," said the defeated M. F. H. "I
shall never forgive you, Dicky."

"Yes, you will, Teddy. A loving-cup, the next time we meet at the
club, will mellow everything."

Quarter of an hour later Miss Hawthorne and I, wrapped in
buffalo-robes, our feet snugly stowed away in straw, slid away, to the
jangle and quarrel of sleighbells, toward Moriarty's Hollywood Inn.
The moon shone; not a cloud darkened her serene and lovely countenance.
The pearly whiteness of the world would have aroused the poetry in the
most sordid soul; and far, far away to the east the black, tossing line
of the sea was visible.

"What a beautiful night!" I volunteered.

"The beginning of the end."

"The beginning of the end? What does that mean?"

"Why, when you first spoke to me, it was about the weather."

"Oh, but this isn't going to be the end; this is the true beginning of
all things."

"I wish I could see it in that light; but we can not see beauty in
anything when hunger lies back of the eyes. I haven't had anything to
eat, save that single apple, for hours and hours. I was so excited at
Mouquin's that I ate almost nothing."

"You are hungry? Well, we'll fix that when we get to Moriarty's. I'll
find a way of waking him up, in case he's asleep, which I doubt. There
will be cold chicken and ham and hot coffee."

"Lovely!"

"And we shall dine with the gods. And now it is all over and done, it
_was_ funny, wasn't it?"

"Terribly funny!"--with a shade of irony. "It would have been funnier
still if the real Haggerty hadn't turned up. The patrol had arrived."

"But it didn't happen. I shall never forget t