"Well-- er-- I shan't be late. I'll be free by the time Downs
returns."

"No. 4 taxi!" came a voice, and Theydon saw his commissionaire perched
on the step of a cab swinging in deftly behind the waiting car. The
girl, gazing at her father, happened to look for an instant at
Theydon, who, fearful lest his candidly admiring glance might have
been a trifle too sustained, pretended a hurried interest in an
unlighted cigarette. That was all. The three crossed the pavement
almost simultaneously.

The next moment the unknown goddess was gone, though Theydon snatched
a final glimpse of her, faintly visible, yet no less radiantly lovely,
as she leaned forward from the depths of the limousine, and waved a
white-gloved hand to her father through a window jeweled with
raindrops.

There was nothing in the incident to provoke a second thought.
Assuredly, Frank Theydon-- as his friends called him-- was not the
only man in the vestibule of Daly's Theater who had found the girl
well worth looking at, and it was the mere accident of propinquity
which enabled him to overhear the quite commonplace remarks of father
and daughter.

A score of similar occurrences had probably taken place in the like
circumstances that night in London, and the maddest dreamer of
fantastic dreams would not have heard the fluttering wings of the
spirit of romance in connection with any one of them. It was by no
means marvelous, therefore, but rather in obedience to the accepted