From the corners of the high balconies strange lights flashed, developing in hideous outlines the phosphorescent colors of the skeletons and long, fuzzy, exaggerated lines of the accompanying worms.

The effect was thrilling. Every sound save the soft swish of the ghastly robes and the delicate footfall of ghostly feet ceased. Not a whisper from a sap-headed youth or a yap from an aged degenerate or a giggle from a silly woman broke the death-like stillness.

Suddenly the music stopped with a crash. Each ghostly couple, skeleton and worm, stood motionless. The silvery note of a trumpet called from the sky. The blinking eyes of the death-heads in the ceiling and on the walls faded slowly. The figures of the dancers moved uneasily in the darkness. The trumpet pealed a second signal--the darkness fled, and the great room suddenly blazed with ten thousand electric lights. The orchestra struck the first notes of a thrilling waltz, and presto!--in an instant the women appeared in all the splendour of the most gorgeous gowns, their bare arms and necks flashing with priceless jewels and each man, but a moment ago a hideous skeleton, bowed before her in immaculate evening clothes.

Just at the moment each caterpillar threw to her attendant her disguise, from the four corners of the vast room were released thousands of gorgeously tinted butterflies, imported from the tropics for the occasion. As the dancers glided through the dazzling scene these wonderfully coloured creatures fluttered about them in myriads, darting and circling in every direction among the flowers and lights until the room seemed a veritable fairyland.

A burst of applause swept the crowd, as Nan's radiant figure passed, encircled by the arm of the leader.

Stuart nodded and clapped his hands with enthusiasm.

A more marvellous transformation scene could scarcely be imagined.

When Nan had passed he turned to speak to Harriet and she had gone. He felt a moment's pain at the disappointment, but before he could find her the music ceased, the dancers paused and the swaying of the crowd made his search vain.

A soft hand was suddenly laid on his arm, and he turned to confront Nan, her eyes flashing with triumph, her cheeks flushed, and her lips parted in a tender smile.

"Well?" she asked in low tones.

"You're a magician, Nan," he answered with enthusiasm.

"Come, I'm going to honour you by sitting out the next two dances, and if you're very good, perhaps more."

When she had seated herself by his side under a bower of roses he was very still for a moment. She looked up with a quizzical expression and said:

"A penny for your thoughts? Am I so very wicked after all?"

Stuart crossed his long legs and looked at her admiringly.

"I'll be honest," he said with deliberation. "I don't think I have ever seen anything more dazzlingly beautiful than your banquet and ball, except----"

"Except what!" she interrupted sharply.

"Except the woman who conceived and executed it."

"That's better, but you must give the credit to the artists I hired."

"In a measure, yes; but their plans were submitted for your approval. I was just wondering whether your imagination was vivid enough to have dreamed half the splendours of such a life when you turned from the little cottage I built for you."

A look of pain clouded the fair face and she lifted her jewelled hand.

"Please, Jim, I'd like to forget some things."

"And you haven't forgotten?"

She looked straight into his eyes and answered in even tones.

"No."

He studied the magnificent pearl necklace that circled her throat. Its purchase had made a sensation in New York. The papers were full of it at the time Bivens had bought it at an auction in Paris, bidding successfully against the agents of the Tzar of Russia. Never had he seen Nan so ravishing. Magnificent gowns, soft laces, and jewelry were made to be worn by such women. There was an eternal fitness in the whole scheme of things in which this glorious creature of the senses lived and moved and had her being.

"I suppose," he began musingly, "I ought, as a patriotic citizen of the Republic, to condemn the enormous waste of wealth you have made here to-night."

"Yes," she answered quietly.

"I ought to tell you how many tears you could wipe away with it, how much suffering you could soften, how many young lives you could save from misery and shame, how many of life's sunsets you could have turned from darkness into the glory of quiet joy; and yet, somehow, I can find nothing in my heart to say except that I've been living in a fairyland of beauty and enchantment. What curious contradictions these hearts of ours lead us into sometimes--don't they?"

Nan looked up quickly and repeated his question in cynical tones.

"Yes, don't they?"

"I know that I ought to condemn this appalling extravagance, and I find myself enjoying it."

Both were silent for a long while and then they began to talk in low tones of the life they had lived as boy and girl in the old South, and forgot the flight of time.

CHAPTER XIX

THE LAST ILLUSION

As the moment drew nearer for the doctor to make known his presence to Bivens his heart began to fail. With an effort he took fresh courage.

"Of course I'll succeed!" he exclaimed. "There's no such thing as defeat for him who refuses to acknowledge it."

As he watched the magnificent ball his eyes grew dim at the thought of the social tragedy which it symbolized, of his own poverty and of the deeper wretchedness of scores to whom he had been trying to minister.

He was fighting to keep his courage up, but the longer he watched the barbaric, sensual display of wealth sweeping before him, the deeper his spirit sank.

The butler touched his arm and he turned with a sudden start, a look of anguish on his rugged face.

"Mr. Bivens will be pleased to see you in the little library, sir, if you will come at once!"

The man bowed with stately deference.

He followed the servant with quick firm step, a hundred happy ideas floating through his mind.

"Of course, it's all right. My fears were absurd!" he mused. "My instinct was right. He will be pleased to see me. He's in a good humour with all the world to-night."

When the doctor was ushered into the library, Bivens, who was awaiting him alone, sprang to his feet with a look of blank amazement, and then a smile began to play about his hard mouth. He thrust his delicate hands into his pockets and deliberately looked the doctor's big figure over from head to foot as he approached with embarrassment.

"My servant announced that a gentleman wished to speak to me a moment.

Will you be good enough to tell me what you are doing in this house to-night?"

The doctor paused and hesitated, his face scarlet from the deliberate insult.

"I must really ask your pardon, Mr. Bivens, for my apparent intrusion.

It is only apparent. I came with my daughter."