ing at her.

"I say, have you given your order?"

"Yass."

She paused awkwardly, for she knew he had not, and saw that he was
trying vainly to make her words mean something in his mind.

"Sha'n't I get you some coffee and rolls--same as day before
yesterday?"

"Yass." He did not know what she said. His heart had stopped beating;
now it began again at a gallop. He turned red. He could see the
handkerchief that was wadded into his outer breast-pocket jar in time
with the heavy thump, thump, thump beneath it. The waitress staid an
awful time. At last she came.

"I waited," she sweetly said, "to get _hot_ ones." He drew the
refreshments towards him mechanically. The mere smell of food made him
sick. It seemed impossible that he should eat it. She leaned over him
lovingly and asked, as if referring to the attitude, "Would you like
any thing more?--something sweet?" His flesh crawled. He bent over his
plate, shook his head, and stirred his coffee without having put any
thing into it.

She tripped away, and he drew a breath of momentary relief, leaned
back in his chair, and warily passed his eyes around to see if there
was anybody who was not looking at him and waiting for him to begin to
eat.

Ages afterward--to speak with Claude's feelings--he rose, took up his
check, and went to the desk. The cashier leaned forward and said with
soft blitheness:

"They're here. They're up-stairs now."

Claude answered never a word. He paid his check. As he waited for
change, he cast another glance over the various groups at the tables.
All were strangers. Then he went out. On the single sidewalk step he
halted, and red and blind with mortification, turned again into the
place; he had left his hat. With one magnificent effort at dignity and
unconcern he went to the rack, took down the hat, and as he lowered it
towards his head cast a last look down the room, and--there stood
Marguerite. She had entered just in time, it seemed to him, but just
too late, in fact, to see and understand the blunder. Oh, agony! They
bowed to each other with majestic faintness, and then each from each
was gone. The girl at the desk saw it and was dumb.

CHAPTER XXI.

LOVE AND LUCK BY ELECTRIC LIGHT.

Mr. Tarbox was really a very brave man. For, had he not been, how
could he have ventured, something after the middle of that afternoon,
in his best attire, up into Claude's workroom? He came to apologize.
But Claude was not there.

He wait