She went before him through the wings to the stage entrance, which he opened for her, and she passed out before him into the fog and the mist. For the first time Blair followed her through the crowd, which was a big one on this night. On the one side waited the poor, who wished her many blessings, and on the other side her admirers, whose thoughts were quite different. Something of this flashed through Dan’s mind,—and in that moment he touched the serious part of life for the first time. In Letty Lane’s motor, the small electric light lit over their heads and the flower vase empty, he sat beside the fragrant human creature whom London adored, and knew his place would have been envied by many a man. “I took your friends to their place all right,” he told her, “and I’m going to see them myself to-morrow. I advised the girl not to get married for her money. Say, this is awfully nice of you to let me take you home!” She seemed small in her corner. “You were great to-night,” Dan went on, “simply great! Wasn’t the crowd crazy about you, though! How does it feel to stand there and hear them clap like a thunderstorm and call your name?” She replied with effort. “It _was_ a nice audience, wasn’t it? Oh, I don’t know how it feels. It is rather stimulating. How’s the other boy?” she asked abruptly, and when Dan had said that Ruggles had left him alone in London, she turned and laughed a little. Dan asked her why she had sent for him to-day. “I’m mighty sorry I was out of town,” he said warmly. “Just to think you should have wanted me to do something for you and I didn’t turn up. You know I would be glad to do anything. What was it? Won’t you tell me what it was?” “The Jew did it for me.” And Dan exclaimed: “It made me simply sick to see that animal in your room. I would have kicked him out if I hadn’t thought that it would make an unpleasant scene for you. We have passed the Savoy.” He looked out of the window, and Letty Lane replied: “I told the driver to go to the Carlton first.” She was taking _him_ home then! “Well, you’ve got to come in and have some supper with me in that case,” he cried eagerly, and she told him that she had taken him home because she knew that Mr. Ruggles would approve. “Not much you won’t,” he said, and put his hand on the speaking tube, but she stopped him. “Don’t give any orders in my motor, Mr. Blair. You sit still where you are.” “Do you think that I am such a simple youth that I—” Letty Lane with a gesture of supreme ennui said to him impatiently: “Oh, I just think I am pretty nearly tired to death; don’t bother me. I want my own way.” Her voice and her gesture, her beauty and her indifference, her sort of vague lack of interest in him and in everything, put the boy, full of life as he was, out of ease, but he ventured, after a second: “Won’t you please tell me what you wanted me to do this afternoon?”