to try it out to-night.” “Who—uh—wrote it?” asked Dirk politely. Dallas began to play again. “H’m? Oh, I did.” They were off once more. They paid no more attention to Dirk. Yet there was nothing rude about their indifference. They simply were more interested in what they were doing. He left telling himself that he wouldn’t go there again. Hanging around a studio. But next day he was back. “Look here, Miss O’Mara,” he had got her alone for a second. “Look here, will you come out to dinner with me some time? And the theatre?” “Love to.” “When?” He was actually trembling. “To-night.” He had an important engagement. He cast it out of his life. “To-night! That’s grand. Where do you want to dine? The Casino?” The smartest club in Chicago; a little pink stucco Italian box of a place on the Lake Shore Drive. He was rather proud of being in a position to take her there as his guest. “Oh, no, I hate those arty little places. I like dining in a hotel full of all sorts of people. Dining in a club means you’re surrounded by people who’re pretty much alike. Their membership in the club means they’re there because they are all interested in golf, or because they’re university graduates, or belong to the same political party or write, or paint, or have incomes of over fifty thousand a year, or something. I like ’em mixed up, higgledy-piggledy. A dining room full of gamblers, and insurance agents, and actors, and merchants, thieves, bootleggers, lawyers, kept ladies, wives, flaps, travelling men, millionaires—everything. That’s what I call dining out. Unless one is dining at a friend’s house, of course.” A rarely long speech for her. “Perhaps,” eagerly, “you’ll dine at my little apartment some time. Just four or six of us, or even——” “Perhaps.” “Would you like the Drake to-night?” “It looks too much like a Roman bath. The pillars scare me. Let’s go to the Blackstone. I’ll always be sufficiently from Texas to think the Blackstone French room the last word in elegance.” They went to the Blackstone. The head waiter knew him. “Good evening, Mr. DeJong.” Dirk was secretly gratified. Then, with a shock, he realized that the head waiter was grinning at Dallas and Dallas was grinning at the head waiter. “Hello, André,” said Dallas. “Good evening, Miss O’Mara.” The text of his greeting was correct and befitting the head waiter of the French room at the Blackstone. But his voice was lyric and his eyes glowed. His manner of seating her at a table was an enthronement. At the look in Dirk’s eyes, “I met him in the army,” Dallas explained, “when I was in France. He’s a grand lad.” “Were you in—what did you do in France?” “Oh, odd jobs.”