Dan, who had started to rise, now leaned toward her and said: “Don’t you worry about it a bit. If you’ll come and sing we will make it right about the price and the charity; everything shall go your way.” She was seized upon by a violent fit of coughing, and Dan leaned toward her and put his arm around her as a brother might have done, holding her tenderly until the paroxysm was past. “Gosh!” he exclaimed fervently, “it’s heartbreaking to hear you cough like that and to think of your working as you do. Can’t you stop and take a good rest? Can’t you go somewhere?” “To Greenland’s icy mountains?” she responded, smiling. “I hate the cold.” “No, no; to some golden sands or other,” he murmured under his breath. “And let me take you there.” But she pushed him back, laughing now. “No golden sands for me. I’m afraid I’ve got to sing in _Mandalay_ to-night.” He looked at her in dismay. She interrupted his protest: “I’ve promised on my word of honor, and the box-office has sold the seats with that understanding.” By her sofa, leaning over her, in a choked voice he murmured: “You _shan’t_ sing! You shan’t go out to-night!” “Don’t be a goose, boy,” she said. “You’ve no right to order me like that. Stand back, please.” As he did so she whisked herself off the sofa with a sudden ardor and much grace. “Now,” she told him severely, “since you’ve begun to take that tone with me, I’m going to tell you that you mustn’t come here day after day as you have been doing. I guess you know it, don’t you?” He stood his ground, but his bright face clouded. They had been so near each other and were now so removed. “I don’t care a damn what people say,” he replied. She interrupted him. She could be wonderfully dignified, small as she was, wrapped as she was in the woolen shawl. “Well,” she drawled with a sudden indolence and indifference in her voice, “I expect you’ll be surprised to hear that _I_ do care. Sounds awfully funny, doesn’t it? But as you have been coming to the theater now night after night till everybody’s talking about it—” “You don’t want my friendship,” he stammered. And Letty Lane controlled her desire to laugh at his boyish subterfuge. “No, I don’t think I do.” Her tone struck him deeply: hurt him terribly. He threw his head up defiantly. “All right, I’m turned down then,” he said simply. “I didn’t think you’d act like this to a boy you’d known all your life!” “Don’t be silly, you know as well as I do that it won’t do.” He did know it and that he had already done enough to make it reasonable for the duchess, if she wanted to, to break their engagement. Slowly preparing to take his leave, he said wistfully: “Can’t I help you in any way? Let me do something with you for your poor. It’s a comfort to have them between us, and you can count on me.” She said she knew it. “But don’t come any more to the wings; get a habit of _not_ coming.”