lated.

For ten minutes there in the Oak Room of the Ritz-Carlton he had been
hurling across the narrow intervening space this mental command to the
girl facing him:

"Look here! Look at me! Let me see your eyes! Look here!"

For half that time she had been conscious of his insistent gaze and
his message. But with as much will power as he himself displayed she
bent her head over her plate and sent back along his telepathic
transmission this reply:

"I won't! I won't!"

But she was weakening.

"Sadie," she said to her companion, "I do awfully want to look up. I
want to see who is looking at me so fiercely. I can just feel it all
through me. Of course it wouldn't be proper, would it?"

"Well, that all depends on who is looking at you, dear, doesn't it? If
it were some horrid old man"--

"No, it doesn't feel a bit like that, Sadie. I don't know just how to
explain it--really it isn't unpleasant at all."

"Why, Helen! And you engaged and going to elo"----

"Hush, Sadie, you mustn't say that in here. Somebody might--but I
positively cannot keep my eyes down another moment. I'm"----

Then splash!

A vicious little jab of the spoon and there followed a disastrous
geyser--a grapefruit geyser.

With a smothered little cry of pain Helen's eyes shut tight and she
groped for her napkin. And to make a good job of it the Fates dragged
in at that moment Helen's guardian aunt, the tall and statuesque Mrs.
Elvira Burton of Omaha, Neb.

The young man who had failed so signally in what was perhaps his
maiden effort at hypnotism viciously seized all the change the waiter
proffered on the little silver tray, flung it back with a snarl, got
up and stamped out of the room.

He was a mighty good looking chap, smartly attired, and if you care
for details, he wore a heliotrope scarf in which there gleamed a
superb black pearl for which he had paid a superb price.

"Can you beat it!" he muttered as he climbed the stairs to the lobby
and mingled with the throng that stood about in stiff groups, idly
chattering and looking as if they bored one another to the verge of
desperation.

"Can you beat it!" he exclaimed again, fairly biting off the words.

So vehemently occupied was he with his chagrin and annoyance that he
stamped heavily upon the pet corn of a retired rear admiral, rudely
bumped a Roumanian duchess, kicked the pink poodle of a famous prima
donna and brought up with a thud against the heroic brawn and muscle
of th