However, she descended with her mother in the elevator; there was a more public caress; and the captain in the Chinese dining-room placed Linda at a small table against the wall. There she had clams--she adored iced clams--creamed shrimps and oysters with potatoes _bordure_, alligator-pear salad and a beautiful charlotte cream with black walnuts. After this she sedately instructed the captain what to sign on the back of the dinner check--Linda Condon, room five hundred and seven--placed thirty-five cents beside the finger-bowl for the waiter, and made her way out to the news stand and the talkative girl who had it in charge. Exhausting the possibilities of gossip, and deciding not to go out to the theatre--in spite of the news girl's exciting description of a play called “The New Sin”--she was walking irresolutely through the high gilded and marble assemblage space when, unfortunately, she was captured by Mr. Moses Feldt. VII He led her to a high-backed lounge against the wall, where, seated on its extreme edge, he gazed silently at her with an expression of sentimental concern. Mr. Moses Feldt was a short round man, bald but for a fluffy rim of pale hair, and with the palest imaginable eyes in a countenance perpetually flushed by the physical necessity of accommodating his rotundity to awkward edges and conditions. As usual he was dressed with the nicest care--a band of white linen laid in the opening of his waistcoat, his scarf ornamented by a pear-shaped pearl on a diamond finished stem; his cloth-topped varnished black shoes glistened, while his short fat fingers clasped a prodigious unlighted cigar. At last, in a tone exactly suited to his gaze, he exclaimed: “So that naughty mama has gone out again and deserted Moses and her little Linda!” In what way her mother had deserted Mr. Feldt she failed to understand. Of course he wanted to marry them--the comprehensive phrase was his own--but that didn't include him in whatever they did. Principally it made a joke for their private entertainment. Mrs. Condon would mimic his eager manner, “Stella, let me take you both home where you'll have the best in the land,” And, “Ladies like you ought to have a loving protection.” Linda would laugh in her cool bell-like manner, and her mother add a satirical comment on the chance any Moses Feldt had of marrying her. Linda at once found him ridiculous and a being who forced a slighting warmth of liking. His appearance was preposterous, the ready emotion often too foolish for words; but underneath there was a--a goodness, a mysterious quality that stirred her heart to recognition. Certain rare things in life and experience affected her like that memory of an old happiness. She could never say what they might be, they came at the oddest times and by the most extraordinary means; but at their occurrence she would thrill for a moment as if in response to a sound of music.