Cabby turned the horse’s head up-town and it trotted listlessly along over the still heated asphalt. Burton leaned forward to catch what air there was and smoked and meditated. For some reason--perhaps it was a glimpse of a florist’s window that did it--his thoughts flew southward to a garden of roses and to a small, graceful figure that walked therein. Fagged by the heat of the long day, he had no strength left with which to combat temptation, and he yielded. It came back to him very vividly; closing his eyes he saw the garden and the blank, drowsy old house; he saw the door beside the rose-vines open and a white-gowned figure trip down the steps. She came nearer and nearer, smiling, happy-eyed, the broad brim of her hat lifting in the breeze and chasing the edge of the mellow shadow over her cheek. Never before had her face come back to him so clearly. In the length of eight blocks he lived over those precious mornings minute by minute. In the middle of the ninth he was suffering all the torments of a despairing lover of twenty. He hurled the dead cigar from his lips to the pavement and thrust up the trap with his cane. [Illustration] “This won’t do,” he muttered savagely; and aloud, “Stop here; I’ve had enough.” [Illustration] On the curb he found himself bathed in the bright glare of many lights; he had landed at the entrance of an uptown theatre. With a shrug of his shoulders he went in. “As well here as anywhere,” he thought. Of the entertainment he recalled but little the next day. But the theatre was fairly cool and the music bright and eminently cheerful. When the final curtain had descended he joined the pushing throng at the right of the house. Half-way towards the entrance his eyes, ranging carelessly over the scene, were suddenly arrested and his heart leaped. Across the rows of empty seats, at the far side of the theatre, a man and a girl were slowly making their way towards the door. The man was tall, thin, with grizzled hair and moustache, Southern-looking from head to heel, and about fifty years of age. The girl was slight and rather small, with brown hair and warm skin hued like the inner petals of a rose. She was plainly dressed in a street skirt of gray and a white shirt-waist against which three or four pink roses drooped. In short, it was Kitty--and the Ogre! [Illustration] Burton looked about him desperately. The only course open was to remain in the aisle where he was and trust to reaching the lobby in time to intercept them. He took advantage of every cranny and crevice in the throng and pushed his way through with slight regard for toes or skirts. It seemed hours before he reached the entrance. Now and then he was able to catch sight of his quarry over the shoulders of the throng. It was while so engaged that he heard an eloquent sound of rending silk and felt himself seized roughly by the arm. He turned to face an indignant cavalier. [Illustration]