As Keith had left the house, Terpsichore had come out of the side entrance, and they had met.  Keith was just wondering how he could find her, and he considered the meeting a fortunate one.  She was in a state of extreme agitation.  It was the first time that she had undertaken to dance at such an entertainment.  She had refused, but had been over-persuaded, and she declared it was all a plot between Wickersham and her manager to ruin her.  She would be even with them both, if she had to take a pistol to right her wrongs.

Keith had little idea that the chief motive of her acceptance had been the hope that she might find him among the company.  He did what he could to soothe her, and having made a promise to call upon her, he bade her good-by, happily ignorant of the interpretation which she who had suddenly sprung uppermost in his thoughts had, upon Wickersham’s instigation, put upon his action.

Keith walked home with a feeling to which he had been long a stranger.  He was somehow happier than he had been in years.  A young girl had changed the whole entertainment for him—­the whole city—­almost his whole outlook on life.  He had not felt this way for years—­not since Alice Yorke had darkened life for him.  Could love be for him again?

The dial appeared to have turned back for him.  He felt younger, fresher, more hopeful.  He walked out into the street and tried to look up at the stars.  The houses obscured them; they were hardly visible.  The city streets were no place for stars and sentiment.  He would go through the park and see them.  So he strolled along and turned into a park.  The gas-lamps shed a yellow glow on the trees, making circles of feeble light on the walks, and the shadows lay deep on the ground.  Most of the benches were vacant; but here and there a waif or a belated homegoer sat in drowsy isolation.  The stars were too dim even from this vantage-ground to afford Keith much satisfaction.  His thoughts flew back to the mountains and the great blue canopy overhead, spangled with stars, and a blue-eyed girl amid pillows whom he used to worship.  An arid waste of years cut them off from the present, and his thoughts came back to a sweet-faced girl with dark eyes, claiming him as her old friend.  She appeared to be the old ideal rather than the former.

All next day Keith thought of Lois Huntington.  He wanted to go and see her but he waited until the day after.  He would not appear too eager.

He called at Norman’s office for the pleasure of talking of her; but Norman was still absent.  The following afternoon he called at Norman’s house.  The servant said Mrs. Norman was out.

“Miss Huntington?”

“She left this morning.”

Keith walked up the street feeling rather blank.  That night he started for the South.  But Lois Huntington was much in his thoughts.  He wondered if life would open for him again.  When a man wonders about this, life has already opened.