"_What would you do_?" asked the stranger quite surprisingly. "God knows!" said Jaffrey Bretton. "But not that!" "Yes--but _what_?" pleaded the stranger. "Search--me!" shrugged Jaffrey Bretton. "That's the whole trouble with 'whooping it up,'" he confided quite frankly. "There's so blamed little to whoop! And it's so soon over! If one only could believe now what the preachers have to say----" "Preachers?" sniffed the stranger. "It is, I admit, a sniffy idea," said Jaffrey Bretton, "but undeniably--quaint! Being somewhat to the effect that the pursuit of 'good works,' on the contrary, is an absolutely inexhaustible amusement! Brand-new every [77] morning, I mean! Just as original at night! A perfectly thrilling novelty--even at noon! Heartache in it now and then perhaps but never any headache! Atrophy of the pocket-book perhaps--but never atrophy of the liver!" "Never--any--headache?" contemplated the stranger. "Not even in the morning, you mean?" Across his face a faint incredulous smile twisted wryly like a twinge of pain. "Oh, now you're joshing!" he said. "In all the world there never was any idea as quaint as that!" "Oh, nonsense!" snapped Jaffrey Bretton. "I've got an idea of my own that's twice as quaint as that!" "Such as what?" bridled the stranger. Across the sweet-scented blur of a fresh cigarette the older man's eyes narrowed suddenly to two mere glints of steel. "I--I hated the way you kissed my little girl!" he said. "Y--yes?" stammered the stranger. "That youngster of mine is such a--little youngster," mused Jaffrey Bretton perfectly evenly. "So totally inexperienced! So [78] desperately affrighted and bewildered already with the untoward happenings of the past week! Personally," he persisted, "I want neither Prude nor Wanton in my family, but either one of them--unfortunately--is made only too easily out of the same sex-shock. In view of which case and under all existing circumstances--you have made it considerably harder, I think, for my little girl to reconstruct normal sex standards while that particular kiss of yours remains the last one in her memory. So I will thank you," said Jaffrey Bretton, "to accompany me now to her drawing-room and show her as best you may how even a man like you can kiss a woman 'Good-night' instead of 'Bad-night!'" "_What_?" jumped the stranger. Starkly for an instant he probed Jaffrey Bretton's unflinching eyes. Then rubbing one hand for a single instant across his clammy forehead he followed Jaffrey Bretton out through the plushy green curtain into the aisle. In the general joggle of the train it was comfortable for each perhaps that the other's footsteps swayed no more, no less, than his [79] own. Even outside Daphne's door the footing was none too certain. "Let us in!" cried Daphne's father quite peremptorily. In a vague mist of rumpled gold hair and soft white negligee Daphne opened the door and ushered the two men into her trig little room.