"My name's James Kirkpatrick." He found the stub of a pencil in his pocket and wrote an address on the flap of an envelope. "I'll think it over. Maybe I'll do it. I dunno, though." "I do hope you will. I'm sure we can learn a good deal from each other. Now, would you mind putting me on the next car? Or don't the socialist tenets admit of gallantry to my sex?" "Socialism admits the equality of the sexes, which is a long sight better, but I guess there's nothing to prevent me seeing you onto your car." He even lifted his hat as she turned to him from the high platform, and as he smiled a little she inferred that he was congratulating himself on having had the last word. CHAPTER VII I Gora, to whom she had telephoned before leaving home, was standing on the steps of her house, looking anxiously up the street, as her young sister-in-law left the car at the corner. Gora walked up to meet her guest. "Where on earth have you, been?" she demanded. "I supposed of course that you'd take a taxi. You should not go out alone at night. Mortimer would be wild. He has the strictest ideas; and you--" "Haven't. Not, any more. I'm tired of being kept in a glass case--being a parasite." She laughed gayly at Gora's look of amazement. "I've had an adventure. Almost the first I ever had." She related it as they walked slowly down the street and up the steps and stairs to the attic. Gora looked very thoughtful as she listened. "Shall you tell Mortimer?" "Oh, I don't know. Possibly not. Why agitate him? The thing is done." "But if you study with this man?" "There is no necessity to explain where I met him. I look upon myself as Morty's partner, not as his subject. We have never disputed over anything yet, but of course as time goes on I shall wish to do many things whether he happens to like it or not. Possibly without consulting him." "You've had time to think these past three months for the first time in your life," said Gora shrewdly. "Here we are. I hope you don't hate stairs. I do when I come home dog-tired, but somehow I can't give up the old place.... And I've lit the candles in your honor." II "Oh, but it is pretty! Charming!" Thought Gora: "I do hope she's not going to be gracious. I've never liked her so well before." But Alexina was too excited to have a firm grip on the Ballinger-Groome tradition. She had had an adventure, an uncommon one, in a far from respectable night district; she had done something that would cause the impeccable Mortimer the acutest anguish if he knew of it; and she had caught sight immediately of Gathbroke's picture framed and enthroned on the mantelpiece. She walked about the room admiring the hangings and prints, the old Chinese lanterns that held the candles.