circle, and little else than her did he see that night--a pair of slender
white shoulders and a mass of pale gold hair, dim with distance. But
there were others who saw, and now and again, glancing at those about
him, he noted two young girls who looked back from the row in front, a
dozen seats along, and who smiled at him with bold eyes. He had always
been easy-going. It was not in his nature to give rebuff. In the old
days he would have smiled back, and gone further and encouraged smiling.
But now it was different. He did smile back, then looked away, and
looked no more deliberately. But several times, forgetting the existence
of the two girls, his eyes caught their smiles. He could not re-thumb
himself in a day, nor could he violate the intrinsic kindliness of his
nature; so, at such moments, he smiled at the girls in warm human
friendliness. It was nothing new to him. He knew they were reaching out
their woman's hands to him. But it was different now. Far down there in
the orchestra circle was the one woman in all the world, so different, so
terrifically different, from these two girls of his class, that he could
feel for them only pity and sorrow. He had it in his heart to wish that
they could possess, in some small measure, her goodness and glory. And
not for the world could he hurt them because of their outreaching. He
was not flattered by it; he even felt a slight shame at his lowliness
that permitted it. He knew, did he belong in Ruth's class, that there
would be no overtures from these girls; and with each glance of theirs he
felt the fingers of his own class clutching at him to hold him down.

He left his seat before the curtain went down on the last act, intent on
seeing Her as she passed out. There were always numbers of men who stood
on the sidewalk outside, and he could pull his cap down over his eyes and
screen himself behind some one's shoulder so that she should not see him.
He emerged from the theatre with the first of the crowd; but scarcely had
he taken his position on the edge of the sidewalk when the two girls