a desire to join in the
conversation.

Wingate took his cue from his questioner's tone and glance.

"A little too thin," he hazarded.

"Molly is almost painfully thin," his companion conceded, with apparent
reluctance, "and I think she makes up far more than she need."

"Bad for the complexion in time, I suppose," he observed.

"I don't know. Molly's been doing it for a great many years. She
understudies me, you know, at the theatre. Would you like me to send you
word if ever I'm unable to play?"

"Quite unnecessary," he replied, with the proper amount of warmth. "I
should be far too brokenhearted to attend if you were not there. Besides,
is Miss Orford clever?"

"Don't ask me," her friend sighed. "She doesn't even do me the
compliment of imitating me. Tell me, don't you love supping here?"

"Under present circumstances," he agreed.

"I love it, too," she murmured, with an answering flash of the eyes. "I
am not sure," she went on, "that I care about these large parties,
although I always like to come when Sir Frederick asks me. He is such a
dear, isn't he?"

"He is a capital host," Wingate assented.

"I am so fond of really interesting conversation," the young lady further
confided. "I love to have a man who really amounts to something tell me
about his life and work."

"Mr. Peter Phipps, for instance?" he suggested. "Didn't I see you
lunching here with him the other day?"

She looked across the table, towards where Phipps was sitting hand in
hand with a young lady in blue, and apparently being very entertaining.
Miss Flossie caught a glimpse of Wingate's expression.

"You don't like Mr. Phipps," she said. "You don't think I ought to lunch
with him."

"I shouldn't if I were a young lady like you, whose choice must be
unlimited," Wingate replied.

"How do you know that it is unlimited?" she demanded. "Perhaps just the
people whom I would like to lunch with don't ask me."

"They need encouragement," he suggested.

She laughed into his eyes.

"Do you know anything about the men who need encouragement?" she
asked demurely.

He avoided the point and made some casual remark about the changes in
London during the last few years. She sighed sorrowfully.

"It has changed for no one so much as me," she murmured. "The war--"

"You lost friends, I suppose?" he ventured.

She closed her eyes.

"Don't!" she whispered. "I never speak of it," she went on, twisting a
ring around her fingers nervously, "I