His new friends had been close to him in the illuminated car, but they were alien, unapproachable, when they stood on an unfamiliar street-crossing snow-dimmed and silent with night. He stared at a street-sign and found that he was on Madison Avenue, up in the Fifties. As they turned east on Fifty-blankth Street he stopped under the street-light, took an envelope from his pocket, and found on it the address of that dear old friend, living on Fifty-blankth, on whom he was going to call. This was to convince the policeman of the perfect purity of his intentions. The fact that there was no policeman nearer than the man on fixed post a block away did not lessen Carl's pleasure in the make-believe. He industriously inspected the house-numbers as he followed the quickly moving girls, and frequently took out his watch. Nothing should make him late in calling on that dear old friend. Not since Adam glowered at the intruder Eve has a man been so darkly uninterested in two charmers. He stared clear through them; he looked over their heads; he observed objects on the other side of the street. He indignantly told the imaginary policemen who stopped him that he hadn't even seen the girls till this moment; that he was the victim of a plot. The block through which the cavalcade was passing was lined with shabby-genteel brownstone houses, with high stoops and haughty dark doors, and dressmakers' placards or doctors' cards in the windows. Carl was puzzled. The girls seemed rather too cheerful to belong in this decayed and gloomy block, which, in the days when horsehair furniture and bankers had mattered, had seemed imposing. But the girls ascended the steps of a house which was typical of the row, except that five motor-cars stood before it. Carl, passing, went up the steps of the next house and rang the bell. "What a funny place!" he heard one of the girls--he judged that it was Ruth--remark from the neighboring stoop. "It looks exactly like Aunt Emma when she wears an Alexandra bang. Do we go right up? Oughtn't we to ring? It ought to be the craziest party--anarchists----" "A party, eh?" thought Carl. "----ought to ring, I suppose, but----Yes, there's sure to be all sorts of strange people at Mrs. Hallet's----" said the voice of the other girl, then the door closed upon both of them. And an abashed Carl realized that a maid had opened the door of the house at which he himself had rung, and was glaring at him as he craned over to view the next-door stoop. "W-where----Does Dr. Brown live here?" he stuttered. "No, 'e don't," the maid snapped, closing the door. Carl groaned: "He don't? Dear old Brown? Not live here? Huh? What shall I do?" In remarkably good spirits he moved over in front of the house into which Ruth and Olive had gone. People were coming to the party in twos and threes. Yes. The men were in evening clothes. He had his information.