He leaned against the side of the window. Roofs, thousands of them,

flat, domed, pinnacled; and somewhere under one of these roofs Stefani

Gregor was eating his heart out. It did not matter that this queer old

eagle whom everybody called Cutty had promised to bring Stefani home.

It might be too late. Stefani was old, highly strung. Who knew what

infernal lies Karlov had told him? Stefani could stand up under physical

torture; but to tear at his soul, to twist and rend his spirit!

The bubble in the champagne died down--as it always will if one permits

it to stand. He felt the old mood seep through the dikes of his gayety.

Alone. A familiar face--he would have dropped on his knees and thanked

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God for the sight of a familiar face. These people, kindly as they

were--what were they but strangers? Yesterday he had not known them;

to-morrow he would leave them behind forever. All at once the mystery

of this bubbling idea was bared: he was going to risk his life in the

streets in the vague hope of seeing some face he had known in the days

before the world had gone drunk on blood. One familiar face.

Of course he would never forget--at any rate, not the girl whose courage

had made possible this hour. Those chaps, scared off temporarily, might

have returned. What had become of her? He was always seeing her lovely

face in the shadows, now tender, now resolute, now mocking. Doubtless he

thought of her constantly because his freedom of action was limited.

He hadn't diversion enough. Books and fiddling, these carried him but

halfway through the boredom. Where was she? Daily he had called her by

telephone; no answer. The Jap shook his head; the slangy boy in the lift

shook his.

She was a thoroughbred, even if she had been born of middle-class

parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle class. A homeless, countryless

derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no

longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The

final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still

thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle class! He was no better than a

troglodyte, set down in a new wilderness.

He heard the curtain rings slither on the pole. Believing the intruder

to be Kuroki he turned belligerently. And there she stood--the girl

herself! The poise of her reminded him of the Winged Victory in

the Louvre. Where there had been a cup of champagne in his veins

circumstance now poured a magnum.

"You!" he cried.




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