"Of course--why not?"

"You want to know? Right now?"

He was looking at her with an expression that was never intended to be worn in a public conveyance, and the thin-faced Polish woman on whose toes they were all but standing looked at them with such lively comprehension that Eleanor felt called upon to a.s.sume her most haughty and dignified manner for the rest of the way.

Miss Linton's party was in full swing when they arrived. It was an extremely hilarious party, the interest centering about a fat man in a dress-suit, with a bath towel around his waist, who was attempting to distil a forbidden elixir from an ingenious condenser of his own invention.

The studio, under a grimy skylight, was cluttered with bric-a-brac, animate and inanimate. A Daibutsu in a gilded shrine dominated one corner, and a handsome woman in a Manchu coat and swinging ear-rings of jade held court in another. At sight of the Martel group she laid down the small silver pipe she was smoking, and swam toward them through a cloud of incense and tobacco smoke.

"Dear old C. M.! Bless his heart!" she cried, kissing Papa Claude effusively. Then she nodded good-naturedly to Eleanor, and held out a welcoming hand to Quin.

"Who is this nice boy?" she asked, her languid black eyes sweeping his face.

"Allow me to present ex-Sergeant Quinby Graham," said Papa Claude impressively--"a soldier of whom his friends and his country have every reason to be proud."

Then, to Quin's utter chagrin, he was conscious of the fact that Papa Claude was giving, in an audible aside, an account of his prowess that placed him second only to another sergeant whom the world acclaimed its chief hero.

"For the Lord's sake, head him off!" he whispered in an agony of embarra.s.sment to Eleanor. "I didn't do half those things he's telling about, and besides----"

But it was too late to interfere. Papa Claude, the center of one animated group after another, was kissing his way through the crowd, whispering the news as he went--that the guest of the evening was no other than the distinguished young Graham whom they all doubtless remembered, etc.

Within fifteen minutes Quin found himself the lion of the evening. Even the fat man and his improvised still were eclipsed by the counter-attraction. His very earnestness in disclaiming the honors thrust upon him added enormously to his popularity. The more clumsy and awkward he was, and the more furiously he blushed and protested, the more attention he received.

"So naf!" "So perfectly natural!" "Nothing but a boy, and yet think what he has done!" were phrases heard on every side.

Papa Claude corralled him in the corner with the Daibutsu and pompously presented each guest in turn. Quin felt smothered by the incense and the flattery. His collar grew tight, perspiration beaded his brow, and he began to cough.

"Effects of mustard-gas," Papa Claude explained in a stage whisper.

For seeming hours the agony endured, until the advent of refreshments caused a momentary diversion, and he made a hasty bolt for Eleanor and freedom.

He found her sitting on the divan, looking rather bored by the attentions of a stout elderly person with small porcine eyes and a drooping black mustache. Without troubling to apologize, Quin interrupted the conversation to say abruptly:

"Miss Nell, I am going."

Eleanor started to rise, but the red-faced one lifted a protesting voice.

"See here, young man," he bl.u.s.tered. "You can't run off with this little girl just when I've got my first chance at her this evening. She's going to stay right here and let me make love to her--isn't she?"

He turned a confident eye upon Eleanor, and even ventured to lay a plump detaining finger on her cool, slim wrist.

Eleanor rose instantly.

"I thought you were never coming!" she said impatiently over the stout man's head, "I've been ready to go for an hour!"

CHAPTER 30

Down in the open square, under the clear cool stars, they looked at each other and laughed.

"Lead me to a bus!" cried Quin. "I want to ride on top of it where the wind can blow through my whiskers. My head feels like a joss-house!"

"Oh, but you were funny!" cried Eleanor. "I wish you could have seen your face when all those women swarmed around you. I was afraid you were going to jump out of the window! Did you ever feel anything so hot and stuffy as that room? And weren't they all silly and make-believe?"

Quin gave a mighty sigh of relief at being out of it.

"Is this the sort of thing you get let in for often?" he inquired, aghast.

"Oftener than I like. You see, all those people are Papa Claude's old friends, and he's been having a lovely time showing me off as he showed you off to-night."

"But you surely don't _like_ it?"

"Of course I don't. And they know it. They are already calling me a prig, and poking fun at me for not smoking and for not liking to have my hands patted and my cheeks pinched. Isn't it funny, Quin? At home I was always miserable because there were too many barriers; I wanted to tear them all down. Here, where there aren't any, I find myself building them up at every turn, and getting furious when people climb over them."

"Bartlett _versus_ Martel, eh?"

"I suppose so. Heaven knows, I wish I were one thing or the other."

"Oh, I don't know," said Quin. "You are pretty nice just as you are."

Then he added inconsequently: "Who was that fat man you were talking to when I came up?"

"Mr. Pfingst. He is Estelle Linton's backer."

"Backer?" queried Quin. Then, when he saw Eleanor's eyes drop, he added vaguely: "Oh! I see!"

For the next block, strange to say, he did not think so much about Eleanor as he did about Miss Isobel Bartlett. The whole situation kept presenting itself through her austere eyes, and instinctively he put a protecting hand on Eleanor's elbow.

When at last they were on top of the bus, with the big, noisy city apparently going in the opposite direction, they promptly forgot all about the studio party and plunged headlong into their own important affairs.

"Begin at the _very_ beginning," commanded Eleanor, settling herself for a good long ride; "I want you to tell me everything."

The beginning and the end and all that lay between them could easily have been compa.s.sed in three words by Quin. But there were things he had pledged himself to tell her before he even broached the subject that was shrieking for utterance. With painstaking exactness he set forth the facts that led up to his dismissal, trying to be fair to Mr. Bangs as well as to himself, and, above all, to claim no credit for taking the stand he had.

But Eleanor would not see it thus. With characteristic fervor she espoused his cause. She declared he had been treated outrageously. He ought to have taken the matter straight to her grandmother. The very idea! After all the work he had done at the factory, for him to be dismissed just because he wouldn't do a thing that he considered dishonorable! She _hated_ Mr. Bangs--she always had hated him; and the more she dwelt upon the fact, the more ardently she approved Quin's course.

"It was perfectly splendid of you to refuse his offer!" she cried, and her eyes blazed with that particular ray of feminine partisanship that is most soothing to the injured masculine. "And you won't lose by it in the long run. You'll get another position right off. Why don't you try to get one here in New York?"

"Would you like me to?"

"I should say I should! Then we could do all sorts of jolly things together. Not studio parties or cabarets, but jolly outdoor things like we used to do at home. Do stay, Quin; won't you?"

She was looking up at him with such frank urgency and such entire sympathy that Quin lost his head completely.

"Miss Nell," he blurted out, "if I stay and get a job and make good, will you marry me?"

Eleanor, who was used to much more subtle manoeuvers, was caught unaware by this sudden attack. For a second she was thrown into confusion; then she rallied all her forces for the defense.