“And now, children,” said the writer, when at last they were in the empty, chilly darkness of the street, “where can I get you a carriage?  The cars seem to have stopped.”

“The cars stop at about one,” said William, “but there’s a place two blocks up where we can get a hack.  Don’t let us take you out of your way.”

“Good-night, then, lad,” said Bocqueraz, laying his hand affectionately on Billy’s shoulder.  “Good-night, you wonderful little girl.  Tell my wife’s good cousins in San Rafael that I am coming over very soon to pay my respects.”

He turned briskly on his heel and left them, and Susan stood looking after him for a moment.

“Where’s your livery stable?” asked the girl then, taking Billy’s arm.

“There isn’t any!” Billy told her shamelessly.  “But I’ve got just a dollar and eighty cents, and I was afraid he would put us into a carriage!”

Susan, brought violently to earth, burst out laughing, gathered her skirts up philosophically, and took his arm for the long walk home.  It was a cool bright night, the sky was spattered thickly with stars, the moon long ago set.  Susan was very silent, mind and heart swept with glorious dreams.  Billy, beyond the remark that Bocqueraz certainly was a king, also had little to say, but his frequent yawns indicated that it was rather because of fatigue than of visions.

The house was astir when they reached it, but the confusion there was too great to give anyone time to notice the hour of their return.  Alfie had brought his bride to see his mother, earlier in the evening, and Ma had had hysterics the moment that they left the house.  These were no sooner calmed than Mrs. Eastman had had a “stroke,” the doctor had now come and gone, but Mary Lou and her husband still hovered over the sufferer, “and I declare I don’t know what the world’s coming to!” Mrs. Lancaster said despairingly.

“What is it-what is it?” Mary Lord was calling, when Susan reached the top flight.  Susan went in to give her the news, Mary was restless to-night, and glad of company; the room seemed close and warm.  Lydia, sleeping heavily on the couch, only turned and grunted occasionally at the sound of the girls’ voices.

Susan lay awake until almost dawn, wrapped in warm and delicious emotion.  She recalled the little separate phases of the evening’s talk, brought them from her memory deliberately, one by one.  When she remembered that Mr. Bocqueraz had asked if Billy was “the fiance,” for some reason she could not define, she shut her eyes in the dark, and a wave of some new, enveloping delight swept her from feet to head.  Certain remembered looks, inflections, words, shook the deeps of her being with a strange and poignantly sweet sense of weakness and power:  a trembling joy.

The new thrill, whatever it was, was with her when she wakened, and when she ran downstairs, humming the Toreador’s song, Mary Lou and her aunt told her that she was like a bit of sunshine in the house; the girl’s eyes were soft and bright with dreams; her cheeks were glowing.