"Pretty little thing, isn't she?" a blonde lady in Mrs. Van Cleave's box asked her neighbor. "Not my style," he replied. "Even if you had no other charms, if you were humpbacked and cross-eyed, that hair of yours would do the trick with me. Haven't you a free afternoon next week, so we could get married?" "I didn't know old Denning was so snappy with his Hebrew," another broke in. "Which reminds me of a story--" "Is it fit to listen to?" the blonde lady asked. "Yes--of course. It's about a Welsh minister--" But the lady had turned away discouraged, to the boredom of the man who really wanted to marry her. But perhaps in that crowded auditorium there may have been some who had understood what Yetta had been talking about. Later in the evening, when she was standing with Longman on the deserted stage, waiting for Mabel, who--to use Eleanor's expression--was "sweeping up," he asked her what she was doing the next day. "I want you to have dinner with me," he said. "Mabel and Isadore Braun are coming. And if it isn't asking too much, I wish you could give me some of the afternoon before they come. I'd like to talk over a lot of things with you. You know I'm sailing the day after to-morrow. It's my last chance to get really acquainted with you." "Sure. I'd like to come," Yetta replied. "But where are you going?" She listened in amazement to his plans. She had thought he was going to marry Mabel. When he had left them at the door of the flat, Yetta asked her with naïve directness if she wasn't engaged to Longman. "No," Mabel laughed. "Where did you get that idea?" "Why, all the girls think you are." "Well, they're all wrong. I'm not." "And aren't you in love with him?" "Not a bit. You Little Foolish, can't people be good friends without being in love?" Yetta went to sleep trying to think out this proposition. She hardly remembered the choice she had made between college and work, nor the strain of the great meeting. It was very hard to believe that Mabel and Walter were not in love. CHAPTER XVII THE OPERATING ROOM