Preference might have carried Xenophon Curry out to the Beach, but ars longa; vita brevis—he settled cheerfully at the Alexander Young so as to be near the theatre.  
Scarcely had he descended from his room when a most surprising circumstance developed. Over in one corner of the lobby stood a small booth where ladies of social prominence were selling flowers for the benefit of a local charity. All at once the impresario stopped and gazed, unbelieving, fascinated. And at the very same moment there was a stir inside the booth, and lo! one of the ladies came forth from it, came smiling and nodding toward him across the lobby, her face shining with welcome, and a ready hand outstretched.
 
Flora Utterbourne—yes, it was really she! Their greeting, as may well be imagined, was effusive and faintly loud. It was really beautiful!
 
“But—I left you on the dock...!” he faltered lamely, but happily.
 
“I know,” she laughed, with warm joyousness, though without his amazement, “but you see—I took the next steamer down, for there were some friends who had been planning to spend a few weeks here and asked me to go along, and I found[95] I could get away, though I really hadn’t intended leaving town just at this time!”
 
They chattered, then, delightedly, and for ever so long couldn’t seem to exhaust the stock of superlative congratulations, self and mutual. At last, however, they seated themselves, and she went on flowingly: “It really was my friends”—just a faintly blushing insistence—“who ‘carried me off’—the Trents, originally of Toronto—perhaps you know them?—and Mrs. Clyde, who was Miss Spurling,—she is the friend I was with in Madeira, the year we met Signora Martinella, who nearly ‘took her life’ in such a strange and tragic way!” And Flora was enthusiastically launched, right then and there, upon a most amazing digression, all about the Signora Martinella, who was encountered first in the ball room—“rather flirting, we thought—quite a frivolous little thing!” And then it developed—oh, well, it was a very absorbing affair, and the Signora in the end didn’t take poison. Oh yes, it was most elaborately enthusiastic; and when the end was reached she and the impresario sat facing each other in a state of breathlessness: it was several seconds before they seemed to realize that all this had no essential point for them! When at length they did realize this, she smiled, a little self-consciously, while he was humorously devouring her with his bright black eyes, and trying to convince himself that this incredible fact really was a fact.
 
“We’ve been scanning the ‘horizon’ with such anxiety,” she told him, “hoping each day for a glimpse of the schooner—trusting and praying that nothing had ‘gone wrong’, and in the meantime we’ve been advertising your ‘songbirds’ really most extensively, and are planning to attend the ............