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Fifty Candles

feur to stop. “I’ll be only a minute,” he said as the car drew up to the curb. “Must have candles—candles for my party.” And he hopped out. We stood there in the fog with the Wagnerian symphony fierce about us. It was after five now, and all San Francisco, to say nothing of Oakland and Berkeley, was stumbling home through the murk.

“Your husband seems in a gay humor to-night,” I remarked to Carlotta Drew. She nodded, but said nothing. “Probably the effect of San Francisco,” I went on. “I’ve always heard of it as a merry town. Life, and color, and romance———”

“And dozens of beautiful girls,” put in Mary Will.

“I don’t see them.”

“Wait till the fog lifts,” she answered.

Henry Drew was again at the door. He ordered the driver to stop at my hotel, then popped back into his seat. In his hand he carried a small package.

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