Mr. Purdy, flushing feebly, saw her to the door, saw her to the hall without. There, while he waited with her for a descending lift, a silk hat that had just come from a malachite bench, alighted from an ascending one. Immediately the other lift took her. "Who was that?" the hat's owner alertly asked. Mr. Purdy rubbed his perspiring hands. "Mrs. Paliser." Jeroloman wheeled like a rat. He looked at the cage. It had vanished. He looked at the other. Above it a moving finger pointed upward. Cold-blooded, meticulously precise, intensely respectable, none the less, for one delirious second, madness seized him. He wished to God he could hurry down, overtake the impostor, lure her into his own office, frighten her out of such wits as she possessed and buy her off for tuppence. Instantly Respectability had him by the collar. He could not. Precision gave him a kick. Wouldn't stand if he did. Deeply he swore. The millions were gone. Hands down, without a struggle, the Paliser estate was rooked. No fault of his though, and mechanically he adjusted that hat. Damn her! In the street below, superbly, with sidereal indifference, the sun shone down on the imbecile activities of man. The storm of the day before that had drenched Cassy so abundantly, had been blown afar, blown from her forever. The sky in which a volcano had formed was remote and empty. "Ouf!" Cassy muttered in relief and muttered, too: "Now for the agent!" She had reached the corner. Just beyond was the subway. It would land her within two squares of the man's greasy office. Now, though, suddenly, she felt a gnawing. A sandwich would taste good. Two sandwiches would taste better. Then, quite as suddenly, that vision, the street with it, everything, except one thing only, vanished. Blocking the way stood Lennox. "Where to in such a hurry?" Easily she smiled and told him. "I'm going to buy a rhinoceros." But for all the easiness of it her tongue nearly tripped. "And what are you doing?" "I? Oh! Cleaning up." Wall Street is not a Japanese tea-garden. It lacks the klop-klop of fountains. Yet, even in its metallic roar there may--for exceptional beings--be peace there. Not for Cassy, though. She could have screamed. A moment only. Lennox turned and both moved on. "Let's get out of this." Cassy looked up at him. "You forget my little errand." "Ah, yes! The rhinoceros. Couldn't you ask me to meet him?" "I shall be giving dinner-parties for him every evening. Would you care to come?" They had reached cavernous steps down which Cassy was going. Lennox raised his hat. "I will come to-night." Through the metallic roar, the four words dropped and hummed. XXXVIII "It is going to be splendid. There will be candles!"--a young person, dead since but still living, exclaimed of her poet's fete. The fete, however lavish, and which you will find reported by Murger, was not held in a kitchen. The poet's garret did not contain a kitchen. That was Paris.