“Never mind!” laughed Anice. “The supper-room’s open, and you’ll enjoy that part of the evening, at any rate.” “I will, eh? Not me, Miss! The Boss’s passed the word that the boys is to hold back, and kind of make a noise like innercent bystanders till the swell push is all fed. So it’s me for the merry outskirts while they’re gettin’ their money’s wort’.” Clive Standish watched them thread their way through the crowd, until Anice’s dainty little head with its crown of shimmering bronze hair was lost to sight. Then he sat looking moodily out on the heterogeneous, ill-assorted company before him. Now that he had talked with Anice he no longer regretted the impulse that had led him to accept Mrs. Conover’s invitation. The girl had always exerted a subtle charm, a nameless influence, over him. Years before, when he was struggling, penniless, to make a living in a city where his family name opened every door to him, yet where it was more of an impediment than otherwise in his task of bread winning; even then he had worked with a vague, half-formed hope of Anice Lanier sharing his final victory. Then had come her own financial reverses, her father’s death, and her withdrawal from the world that had known them both. Since that time circumstances had checked their growing intimacy. It was pleasant to Standish to feel that that intimacy and understanding were now renewed almost just where they had left off. His battle for livelihood and success had beaten from him much of the buoyancy that had once been his charm. Anice seemed the one link connecting him with Youth—the link whereby he might one day win his way back to that dear lost country of his boyish hopes and dreams. It would be good to forget, with her, the dreary uphill struggle that was so bitter and youth-sapping when endured alone. Then he laughed grimly at his own silly fantasy, and came back to every-day self-control. The rooms were clearing. Clive got to his feet and followed the general drift toward the enormous ball-room in the rear of the mansion that had for the occasion been converted into a banquet hall. On the way he encountered a long, lean, pasty-faced young man who hailed him with a weary: “Hello, Standish! Didn’t expect to see you here. Beastly bore, isn’t it? And the governor dragged me all the way from New York to show up at it.” “You spend most of your time in New York nowadays, don’t you, Jerry?” said Clive. “Say, old chap,” protested young Conover, “cut out the ‘Jerry,’ can’t you? My Christian name’s Gerald. ‘Jerry’ was all right enough when I was a kid in this one-horse provincial hole. But it would swamp a man of my standing in New York.”