The leader lifted his baton, and the curtain rose on the third act of the opera. At the same moment the curtain of unacquaintance, drawn aside a hand's-breadth by the young woman's curiosity, fell between these two who knew not so much as each other's names, and who assumed--if either of them thought anything about it--that the wave of chance which had tossed them together would presently sweep them apart again. After the opera the ebbing tide of humanity did so separate them; but when the man had melted into the crowd in the foyer, the young woman had a curious little thrill of regret; a twinge of remorse born of the recollection that she had made him open the book of his life to a stranger for the satisfying of a mere whim of curiosity. Miss Van Vetter was ominously silent on the way home, but she made it a point of conscience to go to Constance's room before her cousin had gone to bed. "Connie Elliott," she began, "you deserve to be shaken! How did you dare to talk with that young man without knowing the first syllable about him?" Constance sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed till the tears came. "Oh, Myra dear," she gasped, "it's worth any amount of disgrace to see you ruffle your feathers so beautifully. Don't you see that I talked to him just because I didn't know any of the syllables? And he told me a lot of them." "I should think he did. I suppose he will call on you next." Connie the unconventional became Miss Elliott in the smallest appreciable lapse of time. "Indeed, he will not. He knows better than to do that, even if he is a ten--" But Miss Van Vetter was gone. CHAPTER II WHEN Jeffard left the theatre he went to his room; but not directly. He made a detour of a few squares which took him down Sixteenth Street to Larimer, and so on around to his lodging, which was in the neighborhood of the St. James hotel. After the manner of those whose goings and comings have reached the accusative point, he took the trouble to assure himself that the burning of a cigar in the open air was the excuse for the roundabout walk; but the real reason showed its head for a moment or two when he slackened his pace at one point in the circuit and glanced furtively up at a row of carefully shaded windows in the second story of a building on the opposite side of the street. The lower part of the building was dark and deserted; but in the alley there was a small hallway screened by a pair of swing doors with glass eyes in them, and at the end of the hallway a carpeted stair leading up to the lighted room above. It was to keep from climbing this stair that Jeffard had gone to the theatre earlier in the evening.