She was unusually smart, all in black: small black tricorne hat, short black caracul coat, loose and swinging, and austere high-necked black velvet frock at a time when most street costumes were like evening gowns. Perhaps she was too smart. Every one in the gold and oak restaurant of the Thornleigh was staring at her as Babbitt followed her to a table. He uneasily hoped that the head-waiter would give them a discreet place behind a pillar, but they were stationed on the center aisle. Tanis seemed not to notice her admirers; she smiled at Babbitt with a lavish “Oh, isn’t this nice! What a peppy-looking orchestra!” Babbitt had difficulty in being lavish in return, for two tables away he saw Vergil Gunch. All through the meal Gunch watched them, while Babbitt watched himself being watched and lugubriously tried to keep from spoiling Tanis’s gaiety. “I felt like a spree to-day,” she rippled. “I love the Thornleigh, don’t you? It’s so live and yet so--so refined.” He made talk about the Thornleigh, the service, the food, the people he recognized in the restaurant, all but Vergil Gunch. There did not seem to be anything else to talk of. He smiled conscientiously at her fluttering jests; he agreed with her that Minnie Sonntag was “so hard to get along with,” and young Pete “such a silly lazy kid, really just no good at all.” But he himself had nothing to say. He considered telling her his worries about Gunch, but--“oh, gosh, it was too much work to go into the whole thing and explain about Verg and everything.” He was relieved when he put Tanis on a trolley; he was cheerful in the familiar simplicities of his office. At four o’clock Vergil Gunch called on him. Babbitt was agitated, but Gunch began in a friendly way: “How’s the boy? Say, some of us are getting up a scheme we’d kind of like to have you come in on.” “Fine, Verg. Shoot.”