Then suddenly, without transition, she felt extraordinarily at peace with herself, with everybody, with everything. After all, she did not know, stranger things had happened, she might even learn to care for him and to care greatly. But whether she did or she did not, she would be true as steel--truer! He had been so nice about it! Yes, she might, particularly since she had made a clean breast of it and he knew she was marrying him for what it pleased him to describe as his pittance. The car now was flying up the Riverside. An omnibus passed. From the roof, a country couple spotted the handsome girl and the handsome young man who were lolling back so sumptuously, and the lady stranger, pointing, said to her gentleman: "Vanderbilt folk, I guess, ain't they dandy!" Behind the lady sat a novelist who was less enthusiastic. Another girl gone gay, was his mental comment. Well, why not? he reflected, for Jones' prejudices were few and far between. Besides, he added: Les Portugais sont toujours gais. But he had other things to think about and he dismissed the incident, which, in less than a week, he had occasion to recall. Cassy, meanwhile, after serenading a fat woman's door and looking from a palatial window at the moving-pictures of her thoughts, at last heard Paliser, who, already, had twice addressed her. "It won't take over an hour or so." But now the Tamburini, ceremoniously attired in a wrapper, strode in and Paliser, who had been straddling the music-bench, stood up. The fact that they had come together and were together, had already darkly enlightened the fallen star and as she strode in she exclaimed with poetry and fervour: "Two souls with but a single thought!" Paliser took his hat. "We are a trifle better provided. I have as many as three or four thoughts and one of them concerns a license. I am going to get it." His face was turned from Cassy and his eyes, which he had fastened on his hostess, held caveats, commands, rewards. Massively she flung herself on Cassy. "Dearie, I weep for joy!" Cassy shoved her away. "Not on me, Tamby." But the dear lady, in attacking her, shot a glance at Paliser. It was very voluble. Cassy, too, was looking at him. Her education had been thorough. She knew any number of useless things. In geography, history, and the multiplication-table she was versed. But Kent's Commentaries, passionate as they are, were beyond her ken. The laws to which they relate were also. None the less, on the subject of one law she had an inkling, vague, unprecised, and, for all she knew to the contrary, incorrect. She blurted it. "Don't I have to go, too?" Ma Tamby grabbed it. "Go where, dearie?" "For the license?" Ma Tamby tittered. "Not unless you love the song of the subway. The license is a man's job." Twisting, she giggled at Paliser. "But not hard labour, he, he!" "A life-term, though," he answered and added: "I'll go at once." That settled it for Cassy. A chair stretched its arms to her. She sat down.