His gesture drew her heed to the east; where, down the darkling, lamp-studded canyon of a cross-town street, stark against a sky pulsing with the faintest foreboding of daybreak, the gaunt, steel-girdered framework of the new Grand Central Station stood—in its harshly angular immensity as majestic as the blackened skeleton of a burnt-out world glimpsed against the phosphorescent pallor of the last chill dawn....
In the great ball-room behind them, the last strains of dance music were dying out.
"Now," said the little man with a brisker accent, "by your leave, we get back to what we were discussing; your welfare—"
"Mr. Sybarite," the girl interrupted impetuously—"whatever happens, I want you to know that I at least understand you; and that to me you'll always be my standard of a gentleman brave and true—and kind."
As impulsively as she had spoken, she gave him her hands.
Holding them fugitively in both his own, he gazed intently into the shadowed loveliness of her face.
Then with a slight shake of his head—whether of renunciation or of disappointment, she couldn't tell—he bent so low that for a thought she fancied he meant to touch his lips to her fingers.
But he gave them back to her as they had come to him.
"It is you who are kind, Miss Blessington," he said steadily—"very kind indeed to me. I presume, and you permit; I violate your privacy, and you are not angry; I am what I am—and you are kind. That is going to be my most gracious memory....
"And now," he broke off sharply, "all the pretty people are going home, and you must, too. May I venture one step farther? Don't permit Bayard Shaynon—"