"I'll not delay you much. I can dress in thirty minutes. My! my! but you're glorious to-night, child! I never saw you look so beautiful!" She pushed him into the dining room, crying: "Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! This is really the first night in my career. Jim's been gone an hour. Dinner up there begins at eight." "But my star does not rise to sing before eleven--the ball begins at twelve. I've plenty of time to love you a minute or two." He drew her near again and kissed her. "I wouldn't exchange my little girl's crown of gold for all the yellow coin of the millionaires we shall see to-night." "And I wouldn't give the father with the loving heart and stainless name for the Kingdom of Mammon." "That's a beautiful saying, my own, I shall not forget it; and now I'll hurry." He ate a hasty meal, dressed in thirty minutes, and at nine o'clock led Harriet to the side entrance of Bivens's great house on the Drive. He was in fine spirits. The reaction from the tension of a pitiful tragedy of sin and shame he had witnessed in the afternoon had lifted him to spiritual heights. For the life of him he couldn't look at his own troubles seriously. They seemed trivial in a world of such shadows as that which fell across his path from behind those iron bars. He rejoiced again that he had made up his mind to live the life of faith and good fellowship with all men, including the little swarthy master of the palace he was about to enter. And so with light heart he stepped through the door which the soft white hand of Death opened. How could he know? CHAPTER XVII SOME INSIDE FACTS As Stuart dressed for Nan's party he brooded over his new relation to his old sweetheart with increasing pleasure. She had begun to tease him with gentle raillery about his tragic exaggeration of the treachery of her betrayal, and laughingly promised to make it all up by introducing him to a group of the richest and most beautiful girls in New York. He could take his choice under her wise guidance. She promised to begin his course of instruction to-night. Never had Bivens's offer seemed more generous and wonderful. His pulse beat with quickened stroke as he felt the new sense of power with which he would look out on the world as a possible millionaire. He gazed over the old Square with a feeling of regret at the thought of leaving it. He had grown to love the place in the past years of loneliness. He had become personally acquainted with every tree and shrub and every limb of the nearby trees. He had watched them grow from his window, seen them sway in the storm, bow beneath the ice, and grow into new beauty and life each spring. He was deciding too soon, perhaps. There were some features of Bivens's business he must understand more clearly before he could give up his freedom and devote himself body and soul to the task of money-making as his associate.