e you to
talk it over with. And you really do understand lots about women and
those things--where did you learn it?"

The smile went out of Kate. She drooped her eyes and let her pink
nails flutter on the tablecloth.

"Suffering and experience, I suppose."

"Could I--would you tell me about it?"

She looked up with an air of sweet sincerity.

"I should like very much to tell you. You could help me as much as you
say I'm helping you. Some other time, we'll have that all out
together. You see, when one has held a thing in her heart for a long
time--well, it's a struggle at first to get it out. But sometime when
I'm in the mood!"

And then he discovered that an appointment at the office was overdue.
While they went through the formalities of checks and wraps, she
talked foolish nothings. He parted with her hurriedly to run after a
Market Street cable car.

"We're going to be the best chums in the world," he said as he shook
hands.

"Indeed we are!"

She watched him as he ran after the car, swung on the platform with
the easy economy of motion which belongs to the athlete. But just
before he set his foot on the platform and looked back at her, she
herself whirled and started down the street, so that he saw only her
trim back-figure, the glint of her bronze hair, the easy grace of her
walk.

CHAPTER XI

So Bertram Chester went on, the easy familiar of the Tiffany
establishment, the contriver of Mrs. Tiffany's household assistances,
and the devoted follower of Eleanor. He never referred in any way to
the scene on the restaurant balcony; he did nothing formally to press
his suit. Indeed, his occasional air of gentle diffidence puzzled and
amused her. She had a queer sense, when she beheld him so, that she
liked it in him less than some of his old uncouthness, and only a
trifle better than such roughness of the heart as that passage with
the Chinese waiter. This new attitude was loose in the back, tight
across the shoulders, short in the seams--it was not made to fit
Bertram Chester. When he launched out into rudimentary art criticism,
stringing together the stock slang which he had picked up in the
studios, when he tried to impress her with his refined acquaintance,
his progress toward "society" of the conventional kind, her amusement
took another turn in the circle of emotion, and became annoyance.

In general company, he reverted to type. At their home dinners, when
wine and good fare had lit the fi