anxious look with a grave smile.

"The other gentlemen will not be with me to-night," he said, glancing
at the note. "But I will dine here as I intended. You can serve for
one."

That was perhaps the proudest night in the history of Walters. He had
always felt that he was born out of his proper sphere, and to-night he
was assured of it. He was a little nervous at first, lest some of Van
Bibber's friends should come in and recognize him; but as the dinner
progressed and the warm odor of the dishes touched his sense, and the
rich wines ran through his veins, and the women around him smiled and
bent and moved like beautiful birds of beautiful plumage, he became
content, grandly content; and he half closed his eyes and imagined he
was giving a dinner to everybody in the place. Vain and idle thoughts
came to him and went again, and he eyed the others about him calmly
and with polite courtesy, as they did him, and he felt that if he must
later pay for this moment it was worth the paying.

Then he gave the waiter a couple of dollars out of his own pocket and
wrote Van Bibber's name on the check, and walked in state into the
_café_, where he ordered a green mint and a heavy, black, and
expensive cigar, and seated himself at the window, where he felt that
he should always have sat if the fates had been just. The smoke hung
in light clouds about him, and the lights shone and glistened on the
white cloths and the broad shirt-fronts of the smart young men and
distinguished foreign-looking older men at the surrounding tables.

And then, in the midst of his dreamings, he heard the soft, careless
drawl of his master, which sounded at that time and in that place like