"Naturally," Pape replied. "But why not's not always why. What I want to ask you is--"

"Leslie Carter play of same name set to music-not jazz-by French composer. House is packed to the roof to-night, as I've been trying to tell you from the start."

Before Pape could offer other insistence he felt himself displaced before the window by a personage disguised in ornate livery.

"Mrs. Blackstone can't attend. Sudden death," said the personage. "She'd be obliged if you could sell these tickets and credit her account."

"It is not Mrs. Blackstone herself who died?" was the official's cold query.

"Indeed, no. She knows it's late, sir, but she'd be obliged if you--"

"I'll oblige her if the money changer won't," Pape interrupted. "I'll take a ticket."

The autocrat of the box office, however, shook his head. "Mrs. B's box is grand tier. Can't be split. Six chairs."

From what so far had seemed a mere human huddle within one of the entrance doors, an eager figure hurried, just behind an eager voice.

"We are five person. How much dollar for five seats of thees box?"

At the little, oldish foreigner in large, newish ready-mades, Fate's unhandyman looked; then on past the emotionful face to following emotionful faces. The human huddle had disintegrated from a ma.s.s of despair into animated units which now moved toward the box office as toward a magnet. Sounds of as many magpies filled the dignified silence-two French women and three men venting recitatives of hope that yet they might hear the Leoncavallo masterpiece. But them, too, the ticket man discouraged, doubtless the more emphatically because of their attire, which was poor, if proud.

"Too much for your party, I'm sure. One-hundred-fifty."

"But not for _my_ party," Pape interposed. "I'll take the whole half dozen."

The sole so-far thing to impress the a.s.sistant treasurer was the roll from which the emergency cash customer began to strip off bank notes.

The recitative of hope soughed into a chorus of disappointment as the moneyed young man clutched his half dozen tickets and started for the inner door. Scarcely could he restrain himself from out-loud laughter as he halted and turned to command:

"Get a hurry on, party! At one-and-fifty there'd ought to be better _parlez vous_ places inside."

Perhaps his inclusive gesture was more comprehensive to them than his words; at any rate, his grin was eloquent.

To his sublet box by way of the grand staircase Peter Stanbury Pape, grand opera patron, strode at the usher's heels; into it, himself ushered his agitated, magpie covey of true music-lovers. Well to one side he slumped into the chair a.s.signed to him by common consent and found an inconspicuous rest for the more tortured of his feet.

Leaning forward, he undertook to get his bearings; concentrated on the dim and distant stage set, where a lady chiefly dressed in an anklet and feathered hat-presumedly Zaza of the t.i.tle role from the way she was conducting herself-seemed to be under great stress of emotion set to song. Before he could focus his gla.s.ses-one of the pairs for all hands round which he had been persuaded to rent at the foot of the stair-case-the orchestra took control and the red velvet curtains came together between the intimate affairs of the great French actress and those of the many-of the great American audience.

After curtain calls had been duly accorded and recognized and there no longer existed any reason for the half-light cloak of a doubtful song-story, the vast auditorium was set ablaze. And with the illumination uprose a buzz of sound like nothing that Pape ever had heard-more like the swarming of all the bees in Montana within an acre of area than anything he could imagine.

Full attention he gave to the _entre-acte_ of this, his first adventure in Orphean halls. Regretting the trusty binoculars idling on his hotel bureau, he screwed into focus the rented gla.s.ses; swept the waving head-tops of the orchestra field below; lifted to the horse-shoe of the subscribers and then to the grand tier boxes with their content of women whom he a.s.sumed to be of society, amazingly made up, daringly gowned, lavishly bedecked with jewels, ostrich feathers and aigrettes. A sprinkling of men, black-togged on the order of himself, made them the more wondrous dazzling. A moving, background pageant of visitors paid them court.

After a polite, if rather futile, attempt to mix his English, as spoken for utility in Montana, with the highly punctuated, mostly superfluous French of his overly grateful "party," Pape left them to their own devices. These seemed largely to take the form of dislocating their necks in an effort to recognize possible acquaintances in the sea of faces which the gallery was spilling down from the roof. Remembering his advice to Polkadot over the value of concentration on the near-by, he centered his attention upon those labeled in his mind as the "hundred-and-fifty simoleon" cla.s.s. His thoughts moved along briskly with his inspection.

Women, women, women. Who would have imagined in that he-man life he had lived on ranches West that the fair were so large a complement of humanity or that so many of them indeed were fair? Had he lost or gained by not realizing their importance? Suppose his ambition had been to furbelow one such as these, could he have given himself to the lure of making good on his own-faithfully have followed Fate's finger to rainbow's end?

However that might be, now that he was freed from slavery to the jealous jade by the finding of that automatically refilling pot of liquid gold, might he not think of the gentler companionship which he had lacked? The chief thing wrong with to-night, for instance, was the selection by chance of the women in his box. They did not speak his language-never could. Had there been a vacant chair for him to offer some self-selected lady, which one from the dazzling display before him would she be?

Perhaps the most ridiculous rule of civilized society-so he mused-was that limiting self-selectiveness. In the acquirement of everything else in life-stock, land, clothes, food-a person went thoroughly through the supply before choosing. Only in the matter of friends must he depend upon accident or the caprice of other friends. How much more satisfactory and straightforward it would be to search among the faces of strangers for one with personal appeal, then to go to its owner and say: "You look like my idea of a friend. How do I look to you?"

And, if advisable in casual cases, such procedure should help especially in a man's search for his mate. Take himself, now, and the emptiness of his life. His bankers had told him he could afford whatever he wanted.

Suppose he wanted a woman, what sort of woman should he want?

Beauty? Must she be beautiful? From the quickening of his pulse as he bent to peer into fair face after fair face with the added interest of this idea, he realized that he enjoyed and feared beauty at least as greatly as the most of men.

Cla.s.s? In a flashed thought of his mother, a Stansbury of _the_ Stansburys of Virginia, he decided on that. Cla.s.s she must have.

And kind she must be-tested kind to the core. Tall, healthy, strong, of course. Graceful if possible. Gracious, but not too much so. Frank and at the same time reserved. Educated up to full appreciation of, but not superiority to himself. Half boy and at least one-and-a-half girl.

That would be plenty to start on, even for the most deliberate and calculating of choosers, which he felt himself dispositionally as well as financially fitted to be. From what he knew of the difficult s.e.x in the rough, he should need time and study to decide accurately just how real were appearances in a finished feminine, trained from infancy, so he had heard, to cover all inner and outer deficiencies. Plenty of time and a steady nerve-that was all he should need to learn her nature, as he had learned the tempers of the most refractory of horses. By the time he was satisfied as to these mentally outlined points, others doubtless would have suggested themselves.

Pape was pleased with his theories, the first dressed-up ones he had evolved on the subject. If all men would go into this vital matter of self-selectiveness, there would be fewer prosperous lawyers, he congratulated himself. Better have a care before marriage than a flock of them-of another sort-after. Firstly, a choice made from personal preference, then the most direct course toward acquaintanceship, a deliberate inspection, a steady eye, a cool nerve--

Suddenly Pape stiffened, body and mind. His gaze fixed on a face within a box on his own level, some ten or so away, just where they began to curve toward the stage. The face was young-childlike in animation and outline. Its cheeks were oval and flushed, its lips red-limned and laughing, its eyes a flashing black. And black was the ma.s.s of curls that haloed it-cut short-_bobbed_.

A brilliant enough, impish enough, barbaric enough little head it was to catch and hold the attention of any strange young man. But that which particularly interested Pape was the filet that bound it-a filet of pearls with an emerald drop.

She wasn't noticing him-she who had thought of him but once and then only as some new sort of anti-fat foodstuff. But another of her party, through lorgnetted opera lenses, was. Pape, focusing his rented pair for close range, returned this other person's regard. The moment seemed long and different from other moments during which, round gla.s.s eye into round gla.s.s eye, they two looked.

At its end Pape rose and left his hundred-and-fifty-simoleon box. His exit was r.e.t.a.r.ded, but not once actually halted, by the conversational overtures-somewhat less comprehensible than before-of his unknown guests. He moved as if under outside control, hypnotic, magnetic, dynamic.

True, he did have a doubtful thought or two on his progress through the foyer. She might not get his advanced idea of to-night instantaneously and might be too conventional to act on it, when explained. She might not give him the benefit of every doubt, which he was more than ready to give her, at first glance. There might be an embarra.s.sing moment-particularly so for him. She might be married and taking her husband seriously. Speaking literally, he just _might_ be thrown out.

But all such thought he counter-argued. What was the use of conviction without courage? Husbands were likely to be met in a one-woman world; were inconvenient, but not necessarily to be feared. And if she doubted him-- But she had the best eyes into which he ever had looked, with field gla.s.ses or without. Why shouldn't she see all that he was at first glance? As for possible embarra.s.sment, wasn't he dressed according to chart and as good as the next man? This was, beyond doubt, his one best opportunity for the test of his theory of self-selection. Why not seize it?

CHAPTER V-ONLY THE BRAVE

Reaching the box which, according to his count of doors, should contain her, Peter Pape tried the door; opened it; stepped into and across the small cloak-room; looked through the brocaded hangings of the outer box.

There she sat, just behind the bobbed youngster, an example of how different one black-haired girl can look from another. Her eyes, of the blue of tropic seas-calm, deep, mysterious-opened to his in surprise. He felt the other eyes in the box upon him, five pairs in all. But he looked only into hers-into the eyes that had summoned him.

Quick at detail, he appreciated at a glance more than the general effect of her. Her gown was of silver lace, a moonlight shimmer that lent a paling sheen to her shoulders and arms. She wore no ornaments, except a cl.u.s.ter of purplish forget-me-nots. As if one could forget anything about her! Forget those long, strong lines of her, not too thin nor yet too st.u.r.dy-those untinted cheeks of an oval blending gently into a chin that was neither hard nor weak-those parted, definitely dented lips, their healthful red indubitable-that black, soft, femininely long hair, simply parted and done in a knot on her neck?

More than at the greater distance, she looked the sort he liked. Did she like the looks of him? He could not voice the question direct, as in his calculations, with eight ears beside her own to hear. But he concentrated on the silent demand that she try to do so as he crossed to her with hand outstretched.

"I am so glad," said he, "to see you again."

Her hand relaxed in his clasp. She rose to her feet; drew up to the full height of her well-poised slenderness. Her expression was neither welcoming nor forbidding; rather was the puzzled, half-ashamed and wholly honest look of a child who can't remember.

"Didn't you ask me to come?"

He bent to her with the low-spoken question; met her eyes as seriously as through the lenses a moment since; waited breathlessly for the test of just how fearless and frank was she. With hope he saw a faint flush spread forward from her ears and tinge delightfully her pallor. Already he had felt the agitation of it in her finger-tips. Relief came with her first words.

"Yes, I know I did," she said.

She knew. Yes, she _knew_. And she had the courage to say so. She not only looked-she _was_ the sort he liked.

Whether from suggestion of his hand or her own volition, she stepped with him to the back of the box. He did not give her time to deny him, even to himself alone. With inspired a.s.surance he urged: