go, Lee. The crowd comes in awful early now, with all
these buyers in town."

Both hands on the table, he half rose, reluctantly, still talking.
"I've got three other songs. They make Gottschalk's stuff look sick.
All I want's a chance. What I want you to do is accompaniment. On the
stage, see? Grand piano. And a swell set. I haven't quite made up my
mind to it. But a kind of an army camp room, see? And maybe you
dressed as Liberty. Anyway, it'll be new, and a knockout. If only we
can get away with the voice thing. Say, if Eddie Foy, all those years
never had a----"

The band opened with a terrifying clash of cymbal and thump of drum.
"Back at the end of my first turn," he said as he Red. Terry followed
his lithe, electric figure. She turned to meet the heavy-lidded gaze
of the woman seated opposite. She relaxed, then, and sat back with a
little sigh. "Well! If he talks that way to the managers I don't
see----"

Ruby laughed a mirthless little laugh. "Talk doesn't get it over with
the managers, honey. You've got to deliver."

"Well, but he's--that song is a good one. I don't say it's as good as
he thinks it is, but it's good."

"Yes," admitted the woman, grudgingly, "it's good."

"Well, then?"

The woman beckoned a waiter; he nodded and vanished, and reappeared
with a glass that was twin to the one she had just emptied. "Does he
look like he knew French? Or could make a rhyme?"

"But didn't he? Doesn't he?"

"The words were written by a little French girl who used to skate down
here last winter, when the craze was on. She was stuck on a Chicago
kid who went over to fly for the French."

"But the music?"

"There was a Russian girl who used to dance in the cabaret and she----"

Terry's head came up with a characteristic little jerk. "I don't
believe it!"

"Better." She gazed at Terry with the drowsy look that was so
different from the quick, clear glance of the Ruby Watson who used to
dance so nimbly in the old Bijou days. "What'd you and your husband
quarrel about, Terry?"

Terry was furious to feel herself flushing. "Oh, nothing. He
just--I--it was---- Say, how did you know we'd quarreled?"

And suddenly all the fat woman's apathy dropped from her like a garment
and some of the old sparkle and animation illumined her heavy face.
She pushed her glass aside and leaned forward on her folded arms, so
that her face was close to Terry's.

"Terry Sheehan, I know you've quarrele