Acquilla blew a thin vapor into the air and reclined--a charming figure among the purple cushions. Seeing her thus, I was again agreeably reminded of the young Ernesta. To dine on the food of the gods and to have a goddess looking at you with tender eyes, a goddess smitten as goddesses were, by the yearning for a mortal; what could a man ask more of Paradise? Divinely content and my imagination mellowed by exquisite vintages I threw the reins to my fancy. A fig for that wig or any wig in the world! In the days of the Roi Soleil and his Watteau Duchesses, who but a peasant ever exposed her own hair! Really Acquilla’s headdress was the creation of an artist and the blue and silvery threads in the softened lights gave a harlequin illusion to the scene. But all at once I remembered Emelia. I set it down to my credit, absurd as it may seem. For the Bogarduses have always stood four-square for the sanctity of the home, the law of the land and the conservative tradition. But an instant’s reflection revealed to me the absurdity of my scruples. Emelia was with history, and I in command of the present, a bachelor again in an age to which no bachelor could object. I turned toward the lovely creature and smiled languorously as a Pacha in his seraglio might have smiled, in his omnipotence. “You were found about a quarter of a mile from here,” said Acquilla returning my smile. “In the course of a series of excavations I have been undertaking to determine the location of your great museum. You were discovered in a steel vault, that had been strangely preserved by a network of beams which had collapsed in a manner to surround you with the protection of an outer shell. It was due to your being in this pocket that you have survived the destruction that was prevalent about you.” “Have you a map of New York?” I asked. Acquilla took up a wireless telephone and gave an order. The table sank by the same invisible service and presently returned with an atlas. I opened it eagerly to the plate of Manhattan and stared at it in perplexity. “But the city--the city has disappeared!” “Oh, no, on the contrary we find it already over-crowded,” said Acquilla. She leaned forward and placed her finger on a spot. “This is where we are and here close by is where you were found.” “Then we must be directly above the junction of Park Avenue and Seventy-Ninth Street, and the museum--” I stopped again and stared at the map, “But what is this?” “That is Gotham Lake of course. We use it as a fish preserve.” “But that is where the Park should be!” All at once I divined what had happened. In the general collapse of the skyscrapers which had raised the level of Manhattan from a hundred and fifty to two hundred feet, the Park had retained its level and filled up with the water released from the broken mains. I explained to Acquilla.