Swinging his stick up to a level with his shoulder at each stride, he raced to Fifty-ninth Street and the nearest taxi-stand. He was whirled to his room. He literally threw his clothes off. He shaved hastily, singing, "Will You Come to the Ball," from "The Quaker Girl," and slipped into evening clothes and his suavest dress-shirt. Seizing things all at once--top-hat, muffler, gloves, pocketbook, handkerchief, cigarette-case, keys--and hanging them about him as he fled down the decorous stairs, he skipped to the taxicab and started again for Fifty-blankth Street. At the house of the party he stopped to find on the letter-box in the entry the name "Mrs. Hallet," mentioned by Olive. There was no such name. He tried the inner door. It opened. He cheerily began to mount steep stairs, which kept on for miles, climbing among slate-colored walls, past empty wall-niches with toeless plaster statues. The hallways, dim and high and snobbish, and the dark old double doors, scowled at him. He boldly returned the scowl. He could hear the increasing din of a talk-party coming from above. When he reached the top floor he found a door open on a big room crowded with shrilly chattering people in florid clothes. There was a hint of brassware and paintings and silken Turkish rugs. But no sight of Ruth or Olive. A maid was bobbing to him and breathing, "That way, please, at the end of the hall." He went meekly. He did not dare to search the clamorous crowd for the girls, as yet. He obediently added his hat and coat and stick to an uncomfortable-looking pile of wraps writhing on a bed in a small room that had a Copley print of Sargent's "Prophets," a calendar, and an unimportant white rocker. It was time to go out and face the party, but he had stage-fright. While climbing the stairs he had believed that he was in touch with the two girls, but now he was separated from them by a crowd, farther from them than when he had followed them down the unfriendly street. And not till now did he quite grasp the fact that the hostess might not welcome him. His glowing game was becoming very dull-toned. He lighted a cigarette and listened to the beating surf of the talk in the other room. Another man came in. Like all the rest, he gave up the brilliant idea of trying to find an unpreëmpted place for his precious newly ironed silk hat, and resignedly dumped it on the bed. He was a passable man, with a gentlemanly mustache and good pumps. Carl knew that fact because he was comparing his own clothes and deciding that he had none the worst of it. But he was relieved when the waxed mustache moved a couple of times, and its owner said, in a friendly way: "Beastly jam!... May I trouble you for a match?" Carl followed him out to the hostess, a small, busy woman who made a business of being vivacious and letting the light catch the fringes of her gold hair as she nodded. Carl nonchalantly shook hands with her, bubbling: "So afraid couldn't get here. My play----But at last----"