“You will go to the Plaza?”

“Yes,” she replied:  “I’ve made up my mind to that.”

“You have a cab waiting, of course.  May I call it for you?”

“My own car,” she said; “the call check is with my wraps.  But,” she smiled, “I shall be glad to give it to you, to hand to the porter, if you’ll be so good.”

He had longed to be asked to accompany her; and at the same time prayed to be spared that trial.  Already he had ventured too perilously close to the brink of open avowal of his heart’s desire.  And that way—­well he knew it!—­humiliation lay, and opaque despair.  Better to live on in the melancholy company of a hopeless heart than in the wretchedness of one rejected and despised.  And who—­and what—­was he, that she should look upon him with more than the transient favour of pity or of gratitude for a service rendered?

But, since she, wise in her day and generation, did not ask him, suddenly he was glad.  The tension of his emotion eased.  He even found grace to grin amiably.

“To do Bayard out of that honour!” he said cheerfully.  “You couldn’t invent a service to gratify me more hugely.”

She smiled in sympathy.

“But he will be expecting to see you home?”

“No matter if he does, he shan’t.  Besides, he lives in bachelor rooms—­within walking distance, I believe.”

Holding aside the window draperies, he followed her through to the ball-room.

Already the vast and shining hall was almost empty; only at the farther wall a handful of guests clustered round the doorway, waiting to take their turn in the crowded cloakrooms.  Off to one side, in a deep apsidal recess, the members of the orchestra were busily packing up their instruments.  And as the last of the guests—­save Marian Blessington and P. Sybarite—­edged out into the ante-rooms, a detachment of servants invaded the dancing-floor and bustled about setting the room to rights.

A moment more, and the two were close upon the vanguard of departing guests.

“You’ll have a time finding your hat and coat,” smiled the girl.

“I?  Not I. With marvellous sagacity, I left ’em with a waiter downstairs.  But you?”

“I’m afraid I must keep you waiting.  No matter if it is four in the morning—­and later—­women do take a time to wrap up.  You won’t mind?”

“Not in the least—­it prolongs my Day of Days!” he laughed.

“I shall look for you in the lobby,” she replied, smiling; and slipped away through the throng.

Picking his way to the elevators, constantly squirming more inextricably into the heart of the press, elbowed and shouldered and politely walked upon, not only fore and aft, but to port and starboard as well, by dame, dowager, and debutante, husband, lover, and esquire, patricians, celebrities and the commonalty (a trace, as the chemists say), P. Sybarite at length found himself only a layer or two removed from the elevator gates.