Gunboat Dorgan, as he meditatively hung up the receiver, did not even miss the vanished newspaper man. He was too busy watching the strange couple still confronting each other on the far side of the studio. The girl, with ice-cold deliberation, pinned a tiptilted turban on her head, adjusted a four-piece blue-fox throw about her shoulders, and drew on a pair of wrinkled-topped gloves. “Where are you going?” demanded the dark-browed expounder of the law, in a tone savoring unmistakably of the cave-man age. “I regard that as entirely my own affair,” retorted the girl in blue-fox, just as unmistakably reverting to the age of ice. “Where are you going?” repeated the neolithic young giant in tweeds. “Will you kindly permit me to open my own door?” said Teddie, with her chin up. “Where are you going?” demanded Gerry, for the third and last time. For one long moment of silence Teddie inspected him as though he were something under plate-glass, something behind Zoo bars. “I’m going home!” she finally told him. “Why?” exacted her altogether too obtuse tormentor. “Because I’m tired of all this!” was the intense but low-noted reply. “Of all what?” demanded the bewildered Gerry. “Of seeing everything that’s most sacred in life mauled over in public—of being mauled over myself as though I was something marked down on a bargain-counter—of finding out that all men are so—so disgusting and degradingly alike!” It seemed to take time for Gerry to digest this. And even with time the process appeared to be unattended by any great degree of satisfaction. “Haven’t I been doing what I could for you?” he demanded, with the air of a man who asked only for reason. “Are you worrying about your fee?” countered the pale-cheeked Teddie. “I don’t want a fee,” said Gerry. “Then what is it you want?” Gerry tried to square his shoulders. “I want _you_!” She met his eye, but it took an effort. And Gerry, for the life of him, couldn’t help thinking once more of the milk-snake in the chocolate-box. “How about my wishes in the matter?” she asked with a slow and pointed emphasis which brought a wince to even Gunboat Dorgan’s Celtic eyes. “Just a minute, yuh folks,” suggested the perturbed man of the ring. “This actin’ as though yuh was married for ten years ain’t goin’ to bury any tomahawks and end the war-dance! There’s been too much pullin’ at cross——” But it was Gunboat’s turn to be interrupted. That final interruption came in the form of the unceremonious flinging back of the studio-door, disclosing the bristling but the immaculate figure of Teddie’s Uncle Chandler. “What’s wrong here, Teddie?” demanded that perplexed-eyed old gentleman, striding into the room with all the dignity his sciatica would permit. “She wants to go home,” said Gerry. And as he said those five words in a singularly dull tone his hands went down to his sides. The movement, in some way, was oddly suggestive of flying colors forlornly lowered.