“And he pulls out a good deal of it on my account.  Poor dad!  Why in the world should I marry a title?”

“Why, indeed!”

“Mrs. Crawford was beautiful tonight.  There wasn’t a beauty at the opera to compare with her.  Royalties are frumps, aren’t they?  And that ruby!  I don’t see how she dares wear it!”

“I am not particularly fond of it; but it’s a fad of hers.  She likes to wear it on state occasions.  I have often wondered if it is really the Nana Sahib’s ruby, as her uncle claimed.  Driver, the Savoy, and remember it carefully; the Savoy.”

“Yes, sir; I understand, sir.  But we’ll all be some time, sir.  Collision forward is what holds us, sir.”

Alone again, Kitty Killigrew leaned back, thinking of the man who had just left her and of his beautiful wife.  If only she might some day have a romance like theirs!  Presently she peered out of the off-window.  A brood of Siegfried-dragons prowled about, now going forward a little, now swerving, now pausing; lurid eyes and threatening growls.

Once upon a time, in her pigtail days, when her father was going to be rich and was only half-way between the beginning and the end of his ambition, Kitty had gone to a tent-circus.  Among other things she had looked wonderingly into the dim, blurry glass-tank of the “human fish,” who was at that moment busy selling photographs of himself.  To-night, in searching for comparisons, this old forgotten picture recurred to her mind; blithely memory brought it forth and threw it upon the screen.  All London had become a glass-tank, filled with human pollywogs.

She did not want to marry a title; she did not want to marry money; she did not want to marry at all.  Poor kindly dad, who believed that she could be made happy only by marrying a title.  As if she was not as happy now as she was ever destined to be!

Voices.  Two men were speaking near the curb-door.  She turned her head involuntarily in this direction.  There were no lights in the frontage before which stood her cab, which intervened between the Brocken haze in the street, throwing a square of Stygian shadow against the fog, with right and left angles of aureola.  She could distinguish no shapes.

“Cheer up, old top; you’re in hard luck.”

“I’m a bally ass.”

“No, no; only a ripping good sporty game all the way through.”

Oddly enough, Kitty sensed the irony.  She wondered if the speaker’s companion did.

“Well, a wager’s a wager.”

“And you’re the last chap to welch a square bet.  What’s the odds?  My word, I didn’t urge you to change the stakes.”

“Didn’t you?”

The voice was young and pleasant; and Kitty was sure that the owner’s face was even as pleasant as his voice.  What had he wagered and lost?

“If you’re really hard pressed. . . .”

“Hard pressed!  Man, I’ve nothing in God’s world but two guineas, six.”