“Women,” she said maliciously, “and you make a living by writing about them. And the Great American Ass believes you know what you’re writing about!” * * * * * Coltfoot telephoned for his car after midnight and drove Annan’s fair guests homeward. Annan, born with a detestation for sleep, locked up and put out the lights unwillingly. As he passed Eris’ door on his way to his room, he halted a moment, listening. “Are you awake, Eris?” he asked in a modulated voice. “Yes,” she answered. “That’s fine!” he exclaimed. “May I come in for a moment?” “Yes, please.” Her light was on. She was sitting up in bed. When he caught the first glimpse of the radiant face, flushed with happy excitement, he scarcely recognised the pinched and pallid girl of the park. In his astonishment he thought her the prettiest thing he remembered ever seeing; stood silent, quite overwhelmed by the unfamiliar beauty of the girl. Entirely unconscious of admiration, she smiled enchantingly--a piquant and really charming picture in her bath-robe and bobbed hair. “Thank you so much,” she said, “for asking Miss Blythe to see me. She pretended you wouldn’t let her come, but I knew she was joking. Miss Blythe asked me to join her own company. I simply can’t sleep for thinking of it.” He came over to the bedside and took a chair. “Eris,” he said, “I really didn’t want Miss Blythe to see you. I thought you ought to go home when you recover.” She looked at him, startled. “Maybe I’m wrong,” he said, “but I think so, still.” After a silence: “You _are_ wrong.... But I know you mean it kindly.” “Hang it all, of course I do. You’re an unusual girl----” Betsy’s words, she remembered--“and you interest me; and I like you.... And I know something about Broadway.... It worries me a little--the combination of you and Broadway.” “I--worry _you_?” “In a way.... Your inexperience.... And you don’t know men.” “No, I don’t know men.” “Well--there you are,” he said, impatiently. Yes, there she was,--in the guest-room bed of one of them. She said, tranquilly: “It is kind of you to be interested in me. I feel it deeply, Mr. Annan. It seems wonderful to me, that a man so--a man like yourself--should have--have time to care what happens to a perfectly strange nobody.... But I _can’t_ go home.... Not yet.... I shouldn’t care to live if I can’t have an opportunity to learn.... So--so that’s _that_.” He, finally, laughed. “Is it, Eris?” “Yes,” she said, smiling at him, “I’m afraid it is.” “And that’s _that_,” he concluded. “Yes, really it is.” “All right.” He got up, stood fumbling with a cigarette. “All right, Eris. If ‘_that’s_’ the verdict, I guess I was wrong. I guess you know your business.” “No. But I hope to.” “You fascinatingly literal kid!----” He burst out laughing, went over and shook hands with her. “Somebody else will have to milk the cows and feed the chickens. That’s plain as the permanent curls on your bobbed head, isn’t it?”