These succinct demands Pape did not put in words although, telepathically, he did not restrain his curiosity. Probably she got something of his vehemence and decided that something was due him. She abstracted her attention completely from the passers-by and gave it to him. “You were fine, Peter Pape, _fine_. After dark to-night I’ll come back and finish my search. If I’d stopped to think—except for my desperation, you know—I never should have asked you to put those people out, it was _so_ impossible. But you were inspired with the one-best idea. You handled the expulsion act as artistically as—as an actor in his big scene.” Now, had there been time for Pape to foreplan his curtain speech he might have continued to be artistic. But Jane’s applause seemed to go to his head. He honestly had meant to continue histrionically suppressed, unasking, admirable. Yet he didn’t; just couldn’t. He stretched his arm along the back of the bench until his finger-tips touched the tweed of her sleeve. Perhaps the contact was unnerving. Perhaps her eyes were too earnest. Perhaps her faint, wistful smile was falsely promising. At any rate, he proceeded to do what he had determined not to do. “It _was_ quite a stunt. I admit it,” he said. “Don’t you think you sort of ought to—That is, don’t you want to reward me?” “Reward you?” She drew away from him and his suggestion. “Of course I don’t mean just that.” Pape’s eyes were on her lips. “You paid me beforehand. What I wish you’d do is to get me in your debt again. The credit system is the one for me. I can do anything to make good when I’m deep in debt. Will you—won’t you——” “_Odious_!” A second or so he blinked into the blast of her interruption. By its flare he saw her interpretation of his bad beginning. He tried an extinguisher. “Wait a minute. Don’t flay me before you understand. I’m not such a jasper as to mean to exact—What I wish you’d do—What I want to ask—Jane, have a little mercy on me. Tell me who and what to you is that man living in your flat.” From the look of her, judging dispassionately as possible, all was over between them. She got to her feet, as he to his. She looked strengthened by righteous rage, he weakened by unrighteous humility. She made the only utterances—and they did not help much, being rather fragmentary. “You think that I—You have assumed that he—You believe that we—So _that_ is why——” In the pause that preceded the lash of further language, Peter Pape realized what it was to be a dumb brute. He felt as must certain dogs he had tried to understand—faithful, well-intentioned, unequal to explaining themselves. He knew that he did not deserve chastisement at the beloved hand, yet could not resent or avert it. Like a dog he leveled his eyes on hers and looked—silent, honest, worshipful. And Jane Lauderdale proved to have a heart for dumb brutes.