"Don't you like me a little bit?"

"Yes, a little."

"What did you get engaged to me for if you only like me a little?"

"Ought not to be engaged to you. That's one of the things I want to talk to you about."

"Well, you are engaged to me, and that's one of the things I don't care to discuss--even with you."

"Oh! Billy," Caroline sighed, "why can't we be just good friends and see a good deal of each other without this perpetual argument about getting married?"

"I don't know why we can't, but we can't," Billy said firmly. "What was the other thing you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Nancy's affairs. The reckless--the criminal way she is running that restaurant, and the unthinkable expenditure of money involved. I can't sleep at night thinking of it."

"And I thought this was going to be a pleasant evening," Billy cried to the stars.

"I wish you'd be serious about this," Caroline said. "Nancy's the best friend I have in the world, and she doesn't seem to be quite right in her mind, Billy. Of course, I approve of a good part of her scheme. I believe that she can be of incalculable value as a pioneer in an enterprise of this sort. Her restaurant is based on a strictly scientific theory, and every person who patronizes it gets a balanced ration, if he has the good sense to eat it as it's served."

"And not leave any protein on his plate," Billy murmured.

"I don't even mind the slight extra expenditure and the deficit that is bound to follow her theory of stuffing all her subnormal patrons with additional nourishment. That is charity. I believe in devoting a certain amount of one's income to charity, but what I mind about the whole proceeding is the crazy way that Nancy is running it. She's not even trying to break even. She orders all the delicacies of the season--no matter what they are. She's paid an incredible amount for the new set of carved chairs she has bought for up-stairs. You'd think she had an unlimited fortune behind her, instead of being in a position where the sheriff may walk in upon her any day."

"Handy men to have around the house,--sheriffs. I knew a deputy sheriff once that helped the lady of the house do a baby wash while he was standing around in charge of the place. All the servants had deserted, and--"

"You pretend to be Nancy's friend, and you're the only thing remotely approaching a lawyer that she has, and yet you can shake with joy at the thought of her going into bankruptcy."

"That isn't what I'm shaking with joy about."

"Nancy must have spent at least twice the amount of her original investment."

"Just about," Billy agreed cheerfully.

Caroline turned large reproachful eyes on him.

"Billy, how can you?"

"Listen to me, Caroline, honey love, it will be all right. Nancy isn't so crazy as she seems. She is running wild a little, I admit, but there's no danger of the sheriff or any other disaster. She knows what she's doing, and she's playing safe, though I admit it's an extraordinary game."

"She's unhappy," Caroline said. "You don't suppose she's going to marry d.i.c.k to get out of the sc.r.a.pe, and that she's suffering because she's had to make that compromise."

"No, I don't," said Billy.

"I can't imagine anything more dreadful than to give up your career--your independence because you were beaten before you could demonstrate it."

"Let's go right in here," Billy said, guiding her by the arm through the door of the grill of the Cafe des Artistes which she was ignoring in her absorption.

It was early but the place was already crowded with the a.s.sortment of upper cut Bohemians, Frenchmen, and other discriminating diners to whom the cafe owed its vogue. Billy and Caroline found a snowy table by the window, a table so small that it scarcely seemed to separate them.

"If it's d.i.c.k that Nancy's depending on," Caroline shook out her mammoth napkin vigorously, "then I think the whole situation is dreadful."

"I don't see why," Billy argued; "have him to fall back on--that's what men are for."

"Your opinion of women, Billy Boynton, just about tallies with the most conservative estimate of the Middle Ages."

"Charmed, I'm sure," he grinned, then his evil genius prompting, he continued. "Isn't that just about what you have me for--to fall back on? You're fond of me. You know I'll be there if the bottom drops out.

You're sure of me, and you're holding me in reserve against the time when you feel like concentrating your attention on me."

"Is that what you think?"

"Sure, it's the way it is. If I haven't got any kick coming I don't see why you should have any. You're worth it to me. That's the point."

Caroline opened her lips to speak, and then thought better of it. The dangerous glint in her pellucid hazel eyes was lost on Billy. He was watching the clear cool curve of her cheek, the smooth brown hair brushed up from the temple, and tucked away under the smart folds of a premature velvet turban.

"I like those mouse-colored clothes of yours," he said contentedly.

"I think the only reason a woman should marry a man is that she--she--"

"Likes him?" Billy suggested.

"No, that she can be of more use in the world married than single. She can't be that unless she's going to marry a man who is entirely in sympathy with her point of view."

"That I know to be unsound," Billy said. "Caroline, my love, this is a bat. Can't we let these matters of the mind rest for a little? See, I've ordered _Pet.i.te Marmite_, and afterward an artichoke, and all the nice fattening things that Nancy won't let me eat."

"I wish you'd tell me about Nancy," Caroline said. "It makes a lot of difference. You haven't any idea how much difference it makes."

"See the nice little brown pots with the soup in them," Billy implored her. "Cheese, too, all grated up so fine and white. Sprinkle it in like little snow-flakes."

But in spite of all Billy's efforts the evening went wrong after that.

Caroline was wrapped in a mantle of sorrowful meditation the opacity of which she was not willing to let Billy penetrate for a moment.

After they had dined they took a taxi-cab up-town and danced for an hour on the smooth floor of one of the quieter hotels. Billy's dancing being of that light, sure, rhythmic quality that should have installed him irrevocably in the regard of any girl who had ever danced with a man who performed less admirably. Caroline liked to dance and fell in step with an unexpected docility, but even in his arms, dipping, pivoting, swaying to the curious syncopation of modern dance time, she was as remote and cool as a snow maiden.

At the table on the edge of the dancing platform where they sat between dances, Billy pledged her in nineteen-four _Chablis Mouton_.

"This is what you look like," he said, holding up his gla.s.s to the light, "or perhaps I ought to say what you act like,--clear, cold stuff,--lovely, but not very sweet."

"If it's d.i.c.k,"--Caroline refused to be diverted--"Nancy is merely taking the easiest way out. Just getting married because she hasn't the courage to go through any other way. She and d.i.c.k have hardly a taste in common--they don't even read the same books."

"What difference does that make?"

"If you don't know I can't tell you. When you see somebody else in danger of following the same course of action that you, yourself, are pursuing," she added cryptically, "it puts a new face on your own affairs."

"Oh! let's get out of here," Billy said, signaling for his check.

Caroline lived, for the summer while her family were away, in an elaborate Madison Avenue boarding-house. The one big room into which the entrance gave, dim and palatial in effect--at least in the light of the single gas-jet turned economically low--seemed scarcely to present a departure from its prototype, the great living hall of the private residence for which the house was originally designed. It was only on the second floor that the character of the establishment became unmistakable. Billy took Caroline's latchkey from her,--she usually opened the door for herself--and let her quietly into the dim interior. Then he stepped inside himself, and closed the door gently after him.

Being a man he entirely failed to note the drift of psychological straws that indicated the sudden sharp turn of the wind, and the presage of storm in the air. He was thinking only of the illusive, desirable, maddening quality of the girl that walked beside him, filled with inexplicable forebodings for a friend, whom he knew to be invulnerable to misfortune. Certain phrases of d.i.c.k's were ringing in his ears to the exclusion of all more immediate conversational fragments.

"Cave-man stuff--that's the answer to you and Caroline.... This watchful waiting's entirely the wrong idea...."