the city came like music to the girl's ears. She preferred that sound to the God-sent quietude of the country from which she had just come.

The city had baked beneath a hot June sun that day. The night was airless and oppressive. Beatrix dropped her cloak and went over to one of the open windows and stood there with the discreet lights showing up the smooth whiteness of her shoulders, arms and back. Her dress was one of those so-called smart things that one sees in the windows of fashionable shops which affect French names. It left very little to the imagination and was as short as it was low. In between it was ugly and foolish, and required a very beautiful young body to live it down and put a check on the ribald laughter of sane people. On the other side of Fifth Avenue the Plaza, with its multitudinous windows all gleaming, reared its head up to the clear sky. Along the glistening street below intermittent automobiles glided like black beetles. The incessant hum of the city came like music to the girl's ears. She preferred that sound to the God-sent quietude of the country from which she had just come.

While a bottle of champagne was opened and cigarettes were placed on the table, York stood with his back against a heavily carved oak armoire in an attitude of carefully considered gracefulness and watched the girl with a sense of extreme triumph. The fact that she was young—very young,—not very much more than twenty,—and was generally acknowledged as having been the most beautiful débutante who had come out in New York society in many years, did not matter. He had painted her portrait and had quieted his numerous trades-people with a certain portion of the very substantial cheque which he had received, but that also did not matter. What did matter was the fact that he, himself, had proved attractive to a Vanderdyke—to the only daughter of the man whose name was known all over the world as the head of one of the richest and certainly the most exclusive family in the United States, whose house on Fifth Avenue contained art treasures which made it more notable than the houses of European royalty, and whose country places with their racing stables, their kennels, their swimming pools and tennis courts, golf courses and polo grounds were the pride of all the little eager people who write society paragraphs. It meant a good deal to the son of the man who had kept a dusty-looking antique shop with dirty windows on Fourth Avenue to be able to assure himself that he exercised enough attraction over this girl to make her run the risk of gossip in order to spend a few stolen hours from time to time in his company alone. With the use of 

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