"I wonder!" said Cassy, whose wonder concerned not their pleasure but her own, and concerned it because she hated snobs, among whom she knew that Lennox moved. "Now, tell me," he resumed. Cassy, realising that it must be then or never, looked up at him. "You remember father's violin?" "I should say I did." "Well, my business in Wall Street was to offer it as--what do you call it?--as collateral." Lennox indicated the bundle. "Is that it?" Cassy nodded. "I had to hide it and smuggle it out without his knowing it. He thinks it stolen. If he knew, he would kill me. As it is, he has gone crazy. To quiet him, I said I would go to the police." Lennox laughed. "And I am the police!" "Yes, you're the police." "All right then. The police have recovered it. Take it back to him. How much do you need? Will a hundred do?" That was not Cassy's idea. She shook her docked head at it. "You're the police but I am a business man. If you make the loan, you must keep the collateral." "You are a little Jew, that's what you are," Lennox, affecting annoyance, replied. Cassy smiled, "I like your jeu d'esprit. But not well enough to accept money as a gift." "Good Lord!" Lennox protested. "Look here! I am not giving money away. I don't mean it as a gift. Pay me back whenever you like. Until then, what do you expect me to do with that thing? Give serenades? No, take it back to your father. I know just how he feels about it. He told me." Cassy shifted the bundle. "Good-bye then." But as he still blocked the way, she added: "Will you let me pass?" Moralists maintain that a man should never argue with a woman, particularly when she is young and good-looking. He should yield, they assert. Cassy's youth and beauty said nothing audible to Lennox. They said nothing of which he was then aware. In addition he was not a moralist. But there are influences, as there are bacilli, which unconsciously we absorb. For some time he had been absorbing a few. He did not realise it then. When he did, he was in prison. That though was later. At the moment he threw up his hands. "I surrender. Will you mind putting it down somewhere?" Cassy turned. Beyond was a table and near it a chair to which she went. There she dumped the violin. In so doing she saw Margaret's picture. "What a lovely girl!" Lennox, who had followed, nodded. "That is Miss Austen to whom I am engaged." "Oh!" said Cassy. She did not know that Lennox was engaged. But suddenly the room had become uncomfortably warm and she blurted it: "How happy she must be!" At the slip, for he thought it one, Lennox laughed. "You mean how happy I must be," exclaimed this rare individual to whom the verb to be happy had a present tense, yet one which even then it was losing. He had been fumbling in a pocket. From it he drew a wad of bills, fives and tens, and made another wad. "Here you are. I will mail you a receipt for the collateral." Cassy, taking the money in one hand, extended the other. "May I say something?"