This was what Mrs.Greggory had meant--and again, as Billy thought of it, Billy's heart rejoiced.
Was not her way clear now before her?
Did she not have it in her power, possibly--even probably--to bring happiness where only sadness was before?
As if it would not be a simple thing to rekindle the old flame--to make these two estranged hearts beat as one again! Not now was the Cause an IMPERTINENCE in tall black letters.

It was, instead, a shining beacon in letters of flame guiding straight to victory.
Billy went to sleep that night making plans for Alice Greggory and Arkwright to be thrown together naturally--"just as a matter of course, you know," she said drowsily to herself, all in the dark.
Some three or four miles away down Beacon Street at that moment Bertram Henshaw, in the Strata, was, as it happened, not falling asleep.

He was lying broadly and unhappily awake Bertram very frequently lay broadly and unhappily awake these days--or rather nights.

He told himself, on these occasions, that it was perfectly natural--indeed it was!--that Billy should be with Arkwright and his friends, the Greggorys, so much.
There were the new songs, and the operetta with its rehearsals as a cause for it all.

At the same time, deep within his fearful soul was the consciousness that Arkwright, the Greggorys, and the operetta were but Music--Music, the spectre that from the first had dogged his footsteps.
With Billy's behavior toward himself, Bertram could find no fault.