match-board partition, and the trumpet attachment of the gramophone disappeared beyond the hole.

"This affair is organised," thought Mr. Prohack, decidedly impressed by the ingenuity of the musical arrangement and by the promptness of the orchestral director in obeying the signal of the bell.

"My name is Prohack," said he. "I'm Miss Prohack's father."

This important announcement ought to have startled the sangfroid of the guardian, but it did not. She merely said, with a slight mechanical smile:

"As soon as this dance is over, sir, I'll let Miss Prohack know she's wanted." She did not say: "Sir, a person of your eminence is above rules. Go right in."

Two girls in all-enveloping dark cloaks entered behind him. "Good-evening, Lizzie," one of them greeted the guardian. And Lizzie's face relaxed into a bright genuine smile.

"Good-evening, miss. Good-evening, miss."

The two girls vanished rustlingly through a door over which was hung a piece of cardboard with the written words: "Ladies' cloakroom." In a few moments they emerged, white and fluffy apparitions, eager, self-conscious, and they vanished through another door. Mr. Prohack judged from their bridling and from their whispers to each other that they belonged to the class which ministers to the shopping-class. He admitted that they looked very nice and attractive; but he had the sensation of having blundered into a queer, hitherto unknown world, and of astonishment and qualms that his daughter should be a ruler in that world.

Lizzie stood up and peeped through a little square window in the match-boarding. As soon as she had finished peeping Mr. Prohack took liberty to peep also, and the dance-studio was revealed to him. Somehow he could scarcely believe that it was not a hallucination, and that he was really in Putney, and that his own sober house in which Sissie had been reared still existed not many miles off.

For Mr. Prohack, not continuously but at intervals, possessed a disturbing faculty that compelled him to see the phenomena of human life as they actually were, and to disregard entirely the mere names of things,—which mere names by the magic power of mere names usually suffice to satisfy the curiosity of most people and to allay their misgivings if any. Mr. Prohack now saw (when he looked downwards) a revolving disc which was grating against a stationary needle 

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