y mouth. At the last moment, even
as I was stepping into a taxicab, I turned back. I went instead to the
desk and boldly asked for the number of your suite. I want that taste
removed, please."

"Tell me how I can do it in the quickest possible manner," he begged.

She turned and looked at him, enquiringly at first, then with a
delightful little smile which relieved all the tenseness of her
expression.

"By assuring me that you are not going to emulate, in however innocent a
fashion, my husband's exploits in the musical comedy world."

He leaned over her chair, took her hands in his and looked into her eyes.

"Honestly," he asked, "do you need any assurance?"

"That is the funny part of it," she laughed. "Since I am here, since I
have seen you, I don't feel that I do, but downstairs I had quite a
horrid little pain."

"You will never have occasion to feel it again," he told her. "I met Miss
Flossie Lane last night for the first time at the supper party to which
Roger Kendrick took me. I was placed next to her, and somehow or other
she seems to have convinced herself that I invited her to lunch to-day."

"And you?"

"To be perfectly honest I can't remember having done anything of the
sort. However, what was I to do?"

"What you did, of course. That is finished. Now tell me about that supper
party. What happened? Was Dredlinton really rude to you?"

"Your husband was drunk," Wingate answered. "He was rude to everybody."

"And what was the end of it?"

"I carried him out of the room and locked him up," he told her.

She laughed softly.

"I can see you doing it," she declared. "Are you as strong as you look,
Mr. John Wingate?"

"I am certainly strong enough to carry you away and lock you up if you
don't call me John," he replied.

"John, then," she said. "I don't mind calling you John. I like it. How
fortunate," she went on lazily, "that we really did get to know one
another well in those days at Etaples. It saves one from all those
twinges one feels about sudden friendships, for you know, after all, in a
way, nothing at Etaples counted. You were just the most charming of my
patients, and the most interesting, but still a patient. Here, you simply
walk into my life and take me by storm. You make a very foolish woman of
me. If I had to say to myself, 'Why, I have known him less than a week!'
it would hurt my pride horribly."

"Blessed little bit of shell that found a temporary shelter in my arm!"
he exc