te myself as high as a skunk like him!"

It may have been a smile that she gave him. At any rate, he caught the
glint of teeth, and her eyes were as cold as steel points. If she had
actually defended the stranger she would not have infuriated Landis so
much.

"Well, what does he say about himself?"

"He says frankly that he's a vagrant."

"And you don't believe him?"

She did not speak.

"Makin' a play for sympathy. Confound a man like that, I say!"

Still she did not answer; and now Landis became alarmed.

"D'you really like him, Nelly?"

"I liked him well enough to introduce him to you, Jack."

"I'm sorry I talked so plain if you put it that way," he admitted
heavily. "I didn't know you picked up friends so fast as all that!" He
could not avoid adding this last touch of the poison point.

His back was to Donnegan, and consequently the girl, facing him, could
look straight across the room at the red-headed man. She allowed herself
one brief glance, and she saw that he was sitting with his elbow on the
table, his chin in his hand, looking fixedly at her. It was the gaze of
one who forgets all else and wraps himself in a dream. Other people in
the room were noting that changeless stare and the whisper buzzed more
and more loudly, but Donnegan had forgotten the rest of the world, it
seemed. It was a very cunning piece of acting, not too much overdone,
and once more the heart of Nelly Lebrun fluttered.

She remembered that in spite of his frankness he had not talked with
insolent presumption to her. He had merely answered her individual
questions with an astonishing, childlike frankness. He had laid his
heart before her, it seemed. And now he sat at a distance looking at her
with the white, intense face of one who sees a dream.

Nelly Lebrun was recalled by the heavy breathing of Jack Landis and she
discovered that she had allowed her eyes to rest too long on the
red-headed stranger. She had forgotten; her eyes had widened; and even
Jack Landis was able to look into her mind and see things that startled
him. For the first time he sensed that this was more than a careless
flirtation. And he sat stiffly at the table, looking at her and through
her with a fixed smile. Nelly, horrified, strove to cover her tracks.

"You're right, Jack," she said. "I--I think there was something brazen
in the way he tagged you. And--let's go home together!"

Too late. The mind of Landis was not oversharp, but now jealousy gave