“Miss Blessington,” said P. Sybarite solemnly, “when you ran off in that taxi at midnight, I had five dollars in all the world.  This minute, as I stand, I’m worth twenty-five thousand—­more money than I ever hoped to see in this life.  It means a lot to me—­a start toward independence—­but I’d give every cent of it for some reliable assurance that Brian Shaynon and his son mean you no harm.”

Surprised and impressed by his unwonted seriousness, the girl instinctively shrank back against the balustrade.

“Mr. Sybarite—!” she murmured, wide-eyed.

He remarked her action with a gesture almost of supplication.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he begged; and there was in his voice the least flavour of bitterness.  “I’m not going to say anything I shouldn’t—­anything you wouldn’t care to hear.  I’m not altogether mad, Miss Blessington; only...

“Well!” he laughed quietly—­“when my run of luck set in to-night back there at the gambling house, I told myself it was Kismet’s doing—­that this was my Day of Days.  If I had thought, I should instead have called it my Night of Nights—­knowing it must wear out with the dawn.”

His gesture drew her heed to the east; where, down the darkling, lamp-studded canyon of a cross-town street, stark against a sky pulsing with the faintest foreboding of daybreak, the gaunt, steel-girdered framework of the new Grand Central Station stood—­in its harshly angular immensity as majestic as the blackened skeleton of a burnt-out world glimpsed against the phosphorescent pallor of the last chill dawn....

In the great ball-room behind them, the last strains of dance music were dying out.

“Now,” said the little man with a brisker accent, “by your leave, we get back to what we were discussing; your welfare—­”

“Mr. Sybarite,” the girl interrupted impetuously—­“whatever happens, I want you to know that I at least understand you; and that to me you’ll always be my standard of a gentleman brave and true—­and kind.”

As impulsively as she had spoken, she gave him her hands.

Holding them fugitively in both his own, he gazed intently into the shadowed loveliness of her face.

Then with a slight shake of his head—­whether of renunciation or of disappointment, she couldn’t tell—­he bent so low that for a thought she fancied he meant to touch his lips to her fingers.

But he gave them back to her as they had come to him.

“It is you who are kind, Miss Blessington,” he said steadily—­“very kind indeed to me.  I presume, and you permit; I violate your privacy, and you are not angry; I am what I am—­and you are kind.  That is going to be my most gracious memory....

“And now,” he broke off sharply, “all the pretty people are going home, and you must, too.  May I venture one step farther?  Don’t permit Bayard Shaynon—­”

“I don’t mean to,” she told him.  “Knowing what I know—­it’s impossible.”