here again.
That little house saw our little beginnings, when we didn't know what we
really meant to do."

"Djenan-el-Maqui then?"

"Ah!" she said, with a changed voice. "Djenan-el-Maqui! What I have felt
there! More than I ever can tell you, Claudie."

She began to desire the comparative quiet of the Park, and was glad that
just then they passed the Plaza Hotel and went toward it.

"I wonder how Enid Mardon is feeling," she said, looking up at the
ranges of windows. "Which is the tenth floor where she is?"

"Don't ask me to count to-day. I would rather play with the squirrels."

They were among the trees now and walked on briskly. Both of them needed
movement and action, something to "take them out of themselves." A gray
squirrel ran down from its tree with a waving tail and crossed just in
front of them slowly. Charmian followed it with her eyes. It had an air
of cheerful detachment, of self-possession, almost of importance, as if
it were fully conscious of its own value in the scheme of the universe,
whatever others might think.

"How contented that little beast looks," said Claude.

"But it can never be really happy, as you and I could be, as we are
going to be."

"No, perhaps not. But there's the other side."

He quoted Dante:

"_Quanto la cosa e piu perfetta, piu senta il bene, e cosi la
doglienza._"

"I don't wish to prove that I'm high up in the scale by suffering," she
said. "Do you?"

"Ought not the artist to be ready for every experience?" he answered.

And she thought she detected in his voice a creeping of irony.

"We are getting near to the theater," she said presently, when they had
walked for a time in silence. "Let us keep in the Park till we are close
to it, and then just stand and look at it for a moment from the opposite
side of the way."

"Yes," he said.

Evening was falling as they stood before the great building, the home of
their fortune of the night. The broad roadway lay between them and it.
Carriages rolled perpetually by, motor-cars glided out of the dimness of
one distance into the dimness of the other. Across the flood of humanity
they gazed at the great blind building, which would soon be brilliantly
lit up for them, because of what they had done. The carriages, the
motor-cars filed by. A little later and they would stop in front of the
monster, to give it the food it desired, to fill its capacious maw. And
out of every carriage, out of every motor-car, would step a j