e fun to ask them over. Sydney used to dine here a great deal
when he was young and poor, and he has _such_ stories of the people he
used to know then!"

Eleanor hesitated. Kate looked again toward Bertram, who was talking
rapidly across his soup to Mark Heath, and:

"Do!" she murmured.

In that instant, Bertram himself cast the die. This had been the
debate across the soup:

"I'm going over to speak to her," said Bertram.

"I shouldn't butt in," said Mark. "It's a balanced party."

"Oh, I shan't try to stay--coming along?" He did not wait to see
whether or not Mark was following.

Miss Gray greeted him more cordially, altogether more sweetly, than
she had ever done in their meetings on the ranch, and passed him about
the circle for introductions. Noticing, then, that Mark had not
followed, Bertram turned and beckoned with impatience. Mark crossed
the room in some embarrassment.

"Is this your first visit to the Hotel Marseillaise?" asked Mrs.
Masters. Mark hesitated; but Bertram laughed and beamed down on her
from his brown eyes.

"Only about my two hundred and first," he said. "Mr. Heath and I dine
here every night we haven't the price to dine anywhere else."

Masters, with that ready tact which he needed in order to live with
Mrs. Masters, rushed into the breach.

"And I should call it about my four hundred and first," he said. "It's
back to the old scenes for the night. I haven't tasted real cabbage
soup since the last time--it has been a canned imitation. For
goodness' sake join us and tell us the news!"

"Do!" said Miss Waddington with animation, and "Please," said those
two escorts who do not figure in this story. Eleanor said nothing, but
her expression was an invitation.

"Sure!" responded Bertram.

The Hotel Marseillaise had familiar customs of its own. For one thing,
guests bothered the waiters as little as possible. Masters smiled when
the two unconscious youths went back to their table, picked up the big
soup tureen, their knives and forks, their plates, and transported
them to the larger table.

They were dragging the lees of a rather squalid Bohemia, these two
boys; a Bohemia the more real because they were unconscious in it. Its
components were a cheap furnished room, restaurants like this,
adventurous companionship in the underworld which thrust itself to the
surface here and there in that master-port of the Saxon advance. Not
for months had either of them been in the society of such