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.