The girl who waited on the table looked devotedly into Melton’s profile as she served. Twice as he started to speak, the Sixth Avenue elevated crashed by outside and he seemed to forget what he meant to say. It seemed more true here in the restaurant than it had been in the house in Harrow Street, that he was wonderfully good to look upon. The realization held a small tumult for Pidge. She was altogether different with him than with any one else. They had finished, and still he lingered. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t intended to come out. I left my bag upstairs. Will you please pay?” To his illness, a look of embarrassment was now added. “It’s in your pocket. Right there----” She pointed to his coat, and he drew out the bills wonderingly. “Oh, I remember,” he said dully. While the waitress was away bringing the change, he shoved the rest of the money across the table to Pidge, but she pushed it back, saying quietly: “I want you to fix up the room rent and get a night train west. We’ll say no more.” His lips whitened under a curious tightening. “Let’s get out in the dark,” he said roughly. They walked back to Eighth Street and over to the Avenue, entering the Square that way. The sooty grass was soft and damp; the faintest trace of fog among the trees. “You’ve got something on me,” he was saying strangely. “You’re not like a girl, but like a woman and a pal, too. You had something on me last night, or I wouldn’t have fallen for you that way.” “When you get back to that Cleveland room--perhaps a real story will come of all this.” “A real story,” he repeated. His eyes were bright and the pallor of his face intense enough to be visible. She was conscious of his inimitable charm as his head inclined to her and she heard his words in the lowest possible tone: “Meeting you--that is the real story.” She pushed away his hand that had lifted to hers. “You’re all right now. I’m going back. Good night and good luck.” He made no attempt to detain her. That night Pidge lay for a long time without sleep. She was forlorn and troubled and restless, but underneath it all there was a queer little throb of happiness, like the recent night of the two letters. It would not be stifled. Every time she could get still enough, she was conscious of it, like the song of a bird that kept on and on, but was only audible in the lulls of almost unbroken traffic. She awoke in the night with the thought of him speeding westward on his train. The next night when she came home there was another letter from Los Angeles, another check dropped out, and a clipping, which she read first--the wedding announcement of “Adolph Musser, the noted metaphysician, and Mrs. Hastings, wealthy widow of the late Rab Gaunt Hastings, firearms manufacturer of New England, at the Byzantine,” etc.