bronze slipper with a large red bow and much open work above, that suggested, if not the French cocotte, at least that San Francisco variety known in local parlance as "South of Market Street Chippy." She did not bear the remotest likeness to a lady. She looked common, fast. Isabel wondered that she had never faced the truth before. It was as if a wave of final criticism heaved from the brain of the man whose life had been passed in the best societies of the world across to hers. But Gwynne was imperturbable and polite, and as they rode down-town in the bright cars Paula thought him "fearfully nice" and was quite sure that he admired her. "We are fearfully late," she remarked, complacently, as she seated herself and looked slowly around the big room with its ornate frescoes and heavy chandeliers, its crowded tables and strange assortment of types. "But it is much nicer--to see them all at once, I mean," she added, untruthfully. Gwynne, whose seat also commanded a view of the room, looked about him with much interest. He had a vague association of impropriety with the name of the restaurant, but he saw only a few painted females and queer-looking men. The majority looked as if they belonged to the higher walks of Bohemia, and quite a fourth were indubitably fashionable. But his more vivid impression was that they all looked gay and care-free, and that their personalities were not wholly obscured by clothes. After lunching or dining at one of the great New York restaurants he had carried away the impression of a tremendously fashionable school in uniform--the women distinguished in appearance beyond those of any other American city, but utterly unindividual. The social bodies of the United States had interested him little, but to-night he glanced about with something of the curiosity of a Columbus discovering the land of his fathers. No doubt his Otis great-grandfather had been intimate with the great-grandfathers of more than one man present; in this remote bit of civilization he almost felt as if he were sitting down with a company of relatives, at the least to a gathering of the clans. And he had rarely seen so many handsome women together, nor such a variety of types. Paula, who knew every one by sight and assiduously read the society papers, volunteered much information while Isabel ordered the dinner; Stone had been detained half-way down the room by a party of friends.