Had he been absent for only the minute that he had promised, the time would have seemed long to the waiting girl, but he remained invisible for much longer, and to Mary, watching the laughing, uncaring strangers from another life, the terror of the city in her soul and the sense of all that she had done lurking in the shadows of her brain, the quarter of an hour appeared to be four times that period. Once she feared that he had met with some accident; once she was saved from starting in search of him only by the knowledge that, in so doing, she must infallibly lose herself. She would have made inquiries of a waiter, but the waiters were too imposing. She would have cried, but she was afraid to cry. She would have ended, perhaps, by some utter betrayal of all that was battling within her; but, just when she was sure, for the thousandth time, that she could endure no more, she saw Max coming toward her from the long-watched door. As soon as she noticed his strangely stern face, the old fear gave place to a fresh one. "What's happened?" she asked. He pulled back his chair spitefully and flung himself into it. "These crazy laws of your America," he snarled, "there ain't no sense in them!" "What's the matter?" she repeated. "Vhy, it's this way. Of course, it don' make no difference; it only puts things off till _mor_nin'; but it's this vay: I got my minister friend on the 'phone, un' he's all ready to marry us, only he says the law says ve must haf a license from City Hall first, un' if ve don't get von, he can go to chail because of marryin' us vith_out_ it." "Well," said Mary, "let's get a license." Max spread forward the palms of his dark hands. "How can ve?" he demanded. "The City Hall closes in the afternoon un' don't open till _mor_nin'." Here, apparently, was tragedy. Specific reasons for its tragic elements the girl would, perhaps, have found it hard to give, but that it was tragic she knew instinctively. Her blue eyes opened wide in fright. "What are we to do?" she pleaded. But Max, the resourceful, had been, it appeared, only temporarily checkmated. "I thought of that," he said. "Ve can't get married now till to-morrow; but my modder has a good friend un' I delephone _her_. She told me she'd be glad to have you her guest ofer to-nighd. I'll take you there in a taxi, un' go home for my own sleep. I'd take you vith me, but it vouldn't do to spring a new vife on the family vithout varnin'. Then I'll have talked vith my own people, und I'll bring them around to the veddin', first thing in the mornin'." Mary, however, quailed. "I don't want to do that," she inconsequently responded. "I don't want to go to strange people's alone." "Oh, don't you vorry, now," Max soothed her. "I'll go vith you for a liddle vhile un' see that you make yourself at home. This friend of my modder's is a fine voman, un' she's _rich_. She is Mrs. Légère. She lives in a fine house: you'll like her."