"The Square," she answered, "and there is the 'bus coming, to gather me in, and you still haven't told me why I shocked your voice into that undernote of astonishment."

Paul Burton smiled, and did not yet enlighten her. Instead he went on stubbornly questioning. "The Square does not mean Madison or Union. I have deductive genius enough to infer that, because they're not places of homes. Is it Gramercy or Washington?"

The girl flashed her smile on him again and replied lightly.

"One enters my square under a marble arch and we who live there always think of it as the Square."

"But Washington square is a long way," he remonstrated. "It's a far journey to take alone."

The girl had stepped out beyond the curb and signaled, then as the 'bus drew over and came to a stop, she nodded to the man as she started up the stair to the roof. "Good-night, Mr. Burton," she called over her shoulder. "You are a good custodian of secrets."

But the musician was climbing up after her and when she seated herself at the front he took his place beside her. "I am going to answer all questions put to me on the way down to the Square," he announced.

"But you have just complained that it's a far journey."

"I beg your pardon. I said it was a far journey to take alone."

She turned in her seat and looked at him. The lips and brow were reserved, even grave, but in the green-gray eyes danced a truant twinkle. As the heavy vehicle rumbled and lurched along the way where the asphalt fell into shadow she became a graceful silhouette of slenderness, but as they passed through the brighter zones about the great opals swung from the lamp pillars, the dimpled little chin and small nose revealed themselves in a sort of baffling warfare of sauciness and dignity. Paul knew that there were well-held frontiers of reserve and self-containment in this woman's nature, but that back of it lay an alluring playground of mischief.

"And yet we are told," she was saying in a low voice, whose music suddenly impressed the musician, "that--

'Down to Gehenna or up to the throne, He travels the fastest, who travels alone.'"

"Just at the moment we are not bound for either of those places," he assured her. "We are going to the Square."

"Why was it?" she demanded suddenly. For a few minutes they had been silent, and Paul had revised his estimate. She could hardly be as old as twenty two. Perhaps she might be twenty.

"Really you are exaggerating," he laughed. "I was neither astonished nor shocked. I was only surprised, and when I tell you why I shall no longer be a man of mystery, consequently I shall no longer be a man of interest."

"But my curiosity will be satisfied. Isn't that quite as important?"

He shook his head. His own curiosity was far from satisfied. He was still wondering why she had no kind word to say for his music.

"I was just surprised to find you there--alone," he said at last.

"Oh!"

Until the 'bus swung into view of the Metropolitan tower neither of them spoke, and then the man turned to look at his companion and found her smiling to herself. It struck him that if she would only laugh aloud, it would be worth hearing. But of that, at that moment, he said nothing.

"Won't you share the joke with me?" he smiled, and she said:

"I was just thinking of your solicitude about my being alone on Fifth avenue, after all the formidable places where I've been alone--in one-night stands."

"One-night stands?" he repeated vaguely after her and she replied only with a matter-of-fact nod, then, for his further enlightenment:

"You see I am an actress and most of my work has been on the road."

Paul Burton's face did not succeed in masking his surprise at the announcement.

"Have I shocked you again?" she demurely inquired.

"Shocked me, no." He disavowed with an almost confused haste. "I suppose I was surprised because the few actresses I have known have all been so unlike you."

"You mean," she amplified, "because I don't make up for the street?"

"I shouldn't have said that," he laughed, then added: "Now if you had told me you were playing truant from a young ladies' seminary, I would have found it quite natural. I saw you out front just before I began playing. Somehow the simple directness of your expression--I hoped it was anticipation--didn't seem to me characteristic of the stage. I fancied that professional people were usually chary of enthusiasm."

"There are at least several sorts of stage people, and they're not all gutter-children," she answered. "And then I haven't always been an actress. It was thrust upon me--by necessity."

"When I play," the man assured her, "the faces out front always grow vague to me. Tonight I saw yours when the others had gone. Then I lost yours, too. I hope I didn't disappoint you."

She shook her head. "No," she said, but to the simple negative she added nothing affirmative.

Paul Burton remained silent, half-piqued, and she, divining his thought, smiled quietly to herself at his petulance, but finally she spoke slowly and gravely: "You are an artist and until tonight you didn't know of my existence. Anything I might say would mean little to you."

"Even," he impulsively demanded, "if it came from the last face that faded?"

"If that is true," she responded, "I don't need to say anything, do I?"

To Paul's subtly attuned nature many things came in intuitive impressions. Now he was keenly interested because this woman whom he had met that night had told him only one thing about herself, that she belonged to a world of which, in the personal sense, his world touched only the least creditable segments. He felt that she would not, without a much riper acquaintanceship, tell him anything more. Yet he felt with conviction that her refinement was not only innate and true, but that of an aristocrat; that her mind was not only quick, but cultivated. As though dropping thoughtlessly into a more musical tongue he spoke next in French, and she replied in that tongue as unconsciously as though she had not noticed his change of language. But though he questioned persistently and skilfully until the 'bus rolled under the arch, he drew no further information from her as to herself, save that at present she was unemployed, and that her days were filled with that most cheerless of tasks, calling on managers.

He gathered that the distinguishing difference between triumph and struggle on the stage was that the managers sent for the triumphant and the struggling called uninvited.

As Paul helped Miss Terroll out of the 'bus and walked at her side the short distance between the terminal of its route and the south side of the Square he said abruptly:

"Some day I want you to do something for me."

"What?"

"To laugh aloud. I suppose you sometimes do laugh aloud, don't you?"

Her response was to break unconsciously into a peal of mirth that held in it a tinkle of soft music and spontaneity.

"I can be provoked," she admitted and to that confession she added the inquiry, "Why do you want to hear me laugh?"

"I did want to hear you laugh because some instinct told me there would be music in it," he assured her. "Now I do want to hear you laugh again, and often, because I know it."

When he had said good-night at her door and had walked across to the Brevoort cab-stand at Eighth street, he took a taxi'. During the drive home he thought only once of Loraine Haswell. "I must see more of Miss Terroll," he informed himself. "She is decidedly interesting."

Hamilton Burton shoved back a mass of papers and smiled across his desk at his secretary.

"Carl, do you chance to recall what General Forrest of the late Confederate States of America had to say on the subject of strategy?"

Bristoll stretched his arms above his head and leaned back in his chair, grateful for a moment of relaxation after two hours of application.

"I believe he reduced military science to the simple proposition of 'gettin' thar fust with the most men,' didn't he?"

"That was his correct formula--and finance has its points of similarity."