The Fortune Hunter
Street. But Horwitz had a "soul," and the yearning of that secret soul was for the stage. Feuerstein did Horwitz the honor of dining with him. At a quarter past seven, with his two dollars intact, with a loan of one dollar added to it, and with five of his original ten cents, he took himself away to the theater. Afterward, by appointment, he met his new friend, and did him the honor of accompanying him to the Young German Shooters' Society ball at Terrace Garden. 

 It was one of those simple, entirely and genuinely gay entertainments that assemble the society of the real New York—the three and a half millions who work and play hard and live plainly and without pretense, whose ideals center about the hearth, and whose aspirations are to retire with a competence early in the afternoon of life, thenceforth placidly to assist in the prosperity of their children and to have their youth over again in their grandchildren. 

 Feuerstein's gaze wandered from face to face among the young women, to pause at last upon a dark, handsome, strong-looking daughter of the people. She had coal-black hair that curled about a low forehead. Her eyes were dreamy and stormy. Her mouth was sweet, if a trifle petulant.  "And who is she?" he asked. 

 "That's Hilda Brauner," replied Horwitz.  "Her father has a delicatessen in Avenue A. He's very rich—owns three flat-houses. They must bring him in at least ten thousand net, not to speak of what he makes in the store. They're fine people, those Brauners; none nicer anywhere." 

 "A beautiful creature," said Feuerstein, who was feeling like a prince who, for reasons of sordid necessity, had condescended to a party in Fifth Avenue.  "I'd like to meet her." 

 "Certainly," replied Horwitz.  "I'll introduce her to you." 

 She blushed and was painfully ill at ease in presence of his grand and lofty courtesy—she who had been used to the offhand manners which prevail wherever there is equality of the sexes and the custom of frank sociability. And when he asked her to dance she would have refused had she been able to speak at all. But he bore her off and soon made her forget herself in the happiness of being drifted in his strong arm upon the rhythmic billows of the waltz. At the end he led her to a seat and fell to complimenting her—his eyes eloquent, his voice, it seemed to her, as entrancing as the waltz music. When he spoke in German it was without the harsh sputtering and growling, the slovenly slurring and clipping to which she had been 
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