He had not made any mistake. She was Shirley Rives beyond any question or doubt. She was the girl whom he had found half frozen, perishing from cold and hunger, without a roof to cover her—without a single friend, apparently, in that whole vast city, save a stenographer in a cheap West Side lodging house. The look in her eyes, the curve of her half-smiling lips as she glanced up into the face of her tall partner, the very sound of her laugh, drove Lawrence almost mad. He hated the fellow with every atom of hatred in his being; hated his graceful dancing, his polished manner, his air of proprietorship; detested, above all, his dark, handsome face with its expression of captivating melancholy. It was only a pose, he told himself bitterly, to gain attention and sympathy. But swiftly that feeling was displaced in the realization that his idol had been shattered. The girl had deliberately deceived him from the very first. She had never been friendless and homeless and desperate at all. As to what reason she could have had for playing with him as she did he had not the remotest conception, but the bitter, intolerable, fact remained that she had made a fool of him. How she must have laughed to herself when he fell into the trap, like a great booby! How entertained she must have been in the restaurant, and later, when he practically forced the money upon her. No doubt it had been a merry play to her, over which she would probably laugh herself weary whenever it came back into her mind. Very likely she had already amused her friends by telling them of her little adventure, and what an easy mark she had found. Barry shivered at the thought. Then he laughed mirthlessly. The trouble with him was that he had taken the jest with deadly seriousness. It was up to him to think of some way to play up to her. She must never know how much the thing had hurt him. He must make her think that he, too, had been playing a part all the time, instead of being the goat. Unfortunately such a thing was much more easily thought of than put into execution. Barry was sore and hurt beyond measure, and not at all in condition for playing a game of that sort. The lights and music, the laughter and gayety, suddenly palled. He felt as if he wanted to get away from it all, yet he did not want to go as long as she was here. The result was that he kept his place behind the palms for fifteen or twenty minutes, during which Miss Rives circled past him time after time. The handsome, melancholy youth had disappeared, and given place to a tawny-haired giant with a strong, pleasant face and infectious laugh which Lawrence disliked unreasoningly. Then followed a slim, graceful chap with a delicately penciled mustache, who showed an inclination for the most sensational dances, and was evidently restrained only by his partner’s preference for the more sedate Boston.