rl persisted, "is she also a kid?"

"The Signorina Leila Grey? No," conceded Johnny, "the Signorina Leila
Grey was born with her wisdom teeth cut. . . . At that she hasn't found
so much to chew on," he murmured cheerily.

The girl's eyes were bright with divinations. "You mean that she did
not--did not find your friend Bob something to chew upon?"

Johnny's laugh was a guffaw. It rang startlingly in that quiet room.
"You're there, Ri-Ri--absolutely there," he vowed. "But where, I
wonder----" He broke off. His look held both surmise and a shrewd
suspicion.

"I--guessed," said Maria Angelina hastily. "And I saw her the first
evening in New York. . . . She is very beautiful."

"She's a wonder," he admitted heartily. "Yes--and I'll say Bob nearly
fell for her. If she'd been expert enough she could have gathered him
in. He just dodged in time--and now he's busy forgetting he ever knew
her."

"Perhaps," slowly puzzled out Maria Angelina, "perhaps the reason that
she was not--not expert, as you say--was because her attention was just
a little--wandering."

Johnny yawned. "Often happens." He struck a few chords. "Where's that
little song of yours--the one you were going to teach me? I could do
something with that at the next show at the club."

"If you will let me sit down, Signor----"

"I'm not crabbing the bench."

"But I wish the place in the center."

"What you 'fraid of, Ri-Ri?" Obligingly Johnny moved over. "Why, you
have me tied hand and foot. I'm afraid to move a muscle for fear you'll
tell me it isn't done--in Italy."

But Ri-Ri gave this an absent smile. For long, now, she had been leading
up to this talk and she felt herself upon the brink of revelations.
. . . Perhaps this Johnny Byrd knew where Barry Elder was. Perhaps they
were friends. . . .

"In New York," she told him, "that Leila Grey was at the restaurant with
a young man--with the Signor Barry Elder."

"Huh? Barry Elder?"

"Are you,"--she was proud of the splendid indifference of her
voice,--"are you a friend of his?"

Uninterestedly, "Oh, I know Barry," Johnny told her. "Bright boy--Barry.
Awful high-brow, though. Wrote a play or something. Not a darn bed in
it. Oh, well," said Johnny hastily, with a glance at the girl's young
face, "I say, how does this go? Ta _tump_ ti tum ti _tump tump_--what do
those words of yours mean?"

"Perhaps this Barry Elder," said Ri-Ri with averted eyes, her hands
fluttering the pages, "perhaps he is the