"Did you tell 'em where you were going to-night?" Sommers asked, rather bitterly. "Say, Howard," Dresser replied, pushing back his chair and resting one arm confidentially on the table, "you must have been a great chump. You had a soft thing of it at Lindsay's--" "I suppose Miss Laura has discussed it with you. I didn't like the set quite as well as you seem to." "Well, it's no use making enemies, when you can have 'em for friends just as easily as not," Dresser retorted, with an air of superior worldly wisdom. * * * * * Miss M'Gann had drawn Alves out of the talk among the men, and they sat by themselves on the lower step of the temple. "I saw Dr. Leonard the other day at a meeting of the Cymbals Society," Miss M'Gann told Alves. "He asked where you were." "I hope he'll come to see us." Miss M'Gann looked at the men and lowered her voice. "I think he knows what was the reason for dismissing you. He wouldn't tell me; but if I see him again, I am going to get it out of him." "Why, what did he say?" Alves asked. "Nothing much. Only he asked very particularly about you and the doctor; about what kind of man the doctor was, and just when you were married and where." Alves moved nervously. "Where were you married, Alves?" Miss M'Gann pursued anxiously. "Here or in Wisconsin? You were so dreadfully queer about it all." "We were not married," Alves replied, in a quiet voice, "at least not in a church, with a ceremony and all that. I didn't want it, and we didn't think it necessary." The younger woman gasped. "Alves! I'd never think it of you--you two so quiet and so like ordinary folks!" "We are like other people, only we aren't tied to each other by a halter. He can go when he likes," Alves retorted. "I want him to go," she added fiercely, "just as soon as he finds he doesn't love me enough." "Um," Miss M'Gann answered. "Lucky you haven't any children. That's where the rub comes." Alves straightened herself with a little haughtiness. "It wouldn't make any difference to _him_. He would do right by them if he had them." "I don't see how he could, at present," Miss M'Gann proceeded, with severe logic. "It's all very well so long as things go easily. _But_ I had rather have the ring." After a little silence, she continued: "It must have had something to do with that, I guess, your being dropped. Did any one know?" "I never said anything about it," Alves replied coldly. She would have liked to add an entreaty, for his sake, that Miss M'Gann keep this secret. But her pride prevented her. "That Ducharme woman must have been talking," Miss M'Gann proceeded acutely. "I saw her around last year, looking seedy, as if she drank." "Possibly," Alves assented, "though she didn't know anything." "Well, my advice to you is to make that right just as soon as ever you can. He's willing?" "I should never let him," Alves exclaimed vehemently; "least of all now!"