was the filet that bound it—a filet of pearls with an emerald drop.

She wasn’t noticing him—she who had thought of him but once and then only as some new sort of anti-fat foodstuff. But another of her party, through lorgnetted opera lenses, was. Pape, focusing his rented pair for close range, returned this other person’s regard. The moment seemed long and different from other moments during which, round glass eye into round glass eye, they two looked.

At its end Pape rose and left his hundred-and-fifty-simoleon box. His exit was retarded, but not once actually halted, by the conversational overtures—somewhat less comprehensible than before—of his unknown guests. He moved as if under outside control, hypnotic, magnetic, dynamic.

True, he did have a doubtful thought or two on his progress through the foyer. She might not get his advanced idea of to-night instantaneously and might be too conventional to act on it, when explained. She might not give him the benefit of every doubt, which he was more than ready to give her, at first glance. There might be an embarrassing moment—particularly so for him. She might be married and taking her husband seriously. Speaking literally, he just might be thrown out.

But all such thought he counter-argued. What was the use of conviction without courage? Husbands were likely to be met in a one-woman world; were inconvenient, but not necessarily to be feared. And if she doubted him—— But she had the best eyes into which he ever had looked, with field glasses or without. Why shouldn’t she see all that he was at first glance? As for possible embarrassment, wasn’t he dressed according to chart and as good as the next man? This was, beyond doubt, his one best opportunity for the test of his theory of self-selection. Why not seize it?

 CHAPTER V—ONLY THE BRAVE

Reaching the box which, according to his count of doors, should contain her, Peter Pape tried the door; opened it; stepped into and across the small cloak-room; looked through the brocaded hangings of the outer box. There she sat, just behind the bobbed youngster, an example of how different one black-haired girl can look from another. Her eyes, of the blue of tropic seas—calm, deep, mysterious—opened to his in surprise. He felt the other eyes in the box upon him, five pairs in all. But he looked only into hers—into the eyes that had summoned him.

Quick at detail, he appreciated at a glance more than the general effect of her. Her gown was of 

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