until he found her. Yet some
instinct, stronger than he dared admit, warned him that she was closer
to him where he now sat.

Puzzled, he gazed out the window, hoping that the panorama of the moving
crowds would ease his worried mind. A man's face detached itself from
the encircling throng, catching and holding Carter's attention. He
leaned eagerly forward, why, he could not have explained. At this, the
man, also turned and looked. An impartial observer of both would have
said that these two were in doubt as to whether they recognized each
other. The man on the sidewalk, while clean, was rather seedy-looking
and apparently a foreigner. His face was drawn and hollow as though
privation had sculptured there. His beard was full and streaked with
gray. His eyes alternately burned with the fires of inward visions and
dulled with disappointment at hopes destroyed. Carter arose and went
closer to the window, with steps still unsteady in his convalescence.

The stranger had passed, but, noting Carter's action, repassed,
evidently as much at loss as the man inside. To him, too, there was
something strangely familiar about the thin, pale face, the languid,
hopeless air, of the man in the club window,--but they were not the
attributes of the man he remembered. Nor was this shade the vigorous
friend he had known so short a while before.

Carter walked deliberately out to the street and extended his hand to
the passer-by who had so strangely moved him. Recognition was complete.

"It is you, at last, Sobieska," he said as the thin hand of the
Krovitzer closed over his own. A smile lighted up the half-veiled eyes,
he read in the American's soul that word of their distress had come too
late.

"Come into the club," Carter urged him. Sobieska smiled grimly as he
glanced down at his shabby garments. Carter understood.

"Let's walk out to the Park," suggested the Krovitzer. "I have something
to tell you that I know you are anxious to hear. Wait, though, until we
get out of the crowd. You don't want Fifth Avenue as an audience, do
you?" he asked as he noted the quick joy which lit Carter's face.

"Just one question," Calvert begged. "Is she well?"

"Yes," replied the Krovitzer, confining himself to the naked assent.
Then, pitying the man who had been so wofully shaken since their parting
in Krovitch, he opened the gate of Pity a bit and added, "She is in New
York."

Carter stopped short in the street and turned to read in the othe