“Well, I am glad that your mind is at rest about it, anyhow,” said the girl with the eyeglasses, “one’s back is so defenseless. Annie once sat behind me at the theater, and I endured agonies lest the bow at the back of my collar was crooked. When we came away, I found that she had actually been so absorbed in the people on the stage that she didn’t know I was there. I had been wanting to see that play for months, and, to save my life, I couldn’t have told you a thing in it after I saw it.” “I know just how you felt,” said the president, “I once went to a matinée with Eustace just before Tom and I were married, and I expected to have great fun, because there was so much danger of being found out. Toward the end of the first act, I heard that horrid Miss Blanque in the seat back of me, saying, ‘Oh, Tom, what would she say if she knew!’ I can tell you that my blood boiled when I thought of such duplicity, and I was tempted to turn and wither them on the spot with a single glance!” “And did you?” eagerly asked the girl with the classic profile. “Why—er, no. I thought Tom might ask why I had come with Eustace, though that was very different.” “Very different, indeed,” said the blue-eyed girl. “And did you—” “Oh, I didn’t enjoy that play a bit. I told Eustace I had a headache at the end of the second act, and—” “No doubt by that time it was true enough. Such duplicity in one whom you trusted was—” “Yes. And he had always said he did not admire Miss Blanque at all. Well, I went home and wrote him a scorching note. I said that but for Eustace, I should never have discovered that he was flirting with another girl while pretending to think of nobody but me!” “That was quite right. I hope he was ashamed of himself!” “Well, no; he wasn’t. He had been at a stockholder’s meeting all that afternoon. My own father was there, and he called him as a witness! And I actually had to explain why I had gone to the matinée with Eustace!” “Oh, my goodness, how awful!” cried the girl with the Roman nose. “But you said you heard Miss Blanque call him Tom!” “So I did. It was Tom Dashaway who was engaged to Elaine. And wasn’t it a joke? She never found him out at all!” “It is awfully hard to get ahead of a man,” sighed the girl with the classic profile; “and it is the irony of fate that when one _does_ succeed in doing it, the victory is usually of such a character that, in order to retain it, one must say nothing at all about it!” “Very true,” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “Oh, I am so enraged with Harold that I feel ready to die! I had an engagement with him on Saturday afternoon, and I forgot all about it and went out with Marie. I never thought of him at all until I saw him coming up the street, and then I dragged Marie into a shop. I was so excited that she thought a mad dog was coming, and almost created a scene!” “And did he recognize you?” asked the blue-eyed girl.