ement is marking time and
praying for a change in conditions. Well, here we have a restaurant
opening at the most crucial period in the history of such enterprises,
offering its patrons the delicacies of the season most exquisitely
cooked, at what is practically the minimum price for a respectable
meal."

"That's true, isn't it?"

"More than that, there are people who come here, who order one thing
and get another, and the thing they get is always a much more
elaborate and extravagant dish than the one they asked for. I've seen
that happen again and again."

"Have you?" Nancy asked faintly, shrinking a little beneath the
intentness of his look. "How--how do you account for it?"

"There's only one way to account for it."

"Do you think that there is an--an unlimited amount of capital behind
it?"

"I think that goes without saying," he said; "there must be an
unlimited amount of capital behind it, or it wouldn't continue to
flourish like a green bay tree; but that's not in the nature of a
discovery. Anybody with any power of observation at all would have
come to that conclusion long since."

"Then, what is it you have found out?" Nancy asked, quaking.

"My discovery is--" Collier Pratt paused for the whole effect of his
revelation to penetrate to her consciousness, "that this whole outfit
is run _philanthropically_."

"Philanthropically?"

"Don't you see? There can't be any other explanation of it. It's an
eleemosynary institution. That's what it is."

Nancy met his expectant eyes with a trifle of wildness in her own, but
he continued to hold her gaze triumphantly.

"Don't you see," he repeated, "doesn't everything point to that as the
only possible explanation? It's some rich woman's plaything. That
accounts for the food, the setting,--everything in fact that has
puzzled us. Amateur,--that's the word; effective, delightful but
inexperienced. It sticks out all over the place."

"The food isn't amateur," Nancy said, a little resentfully.

"Nothing is amateur but the spirit behind it, through which we profit.
Don't you see?"

"I'm beginning to see," Nancy admitted, "perhaps you are right. I
guess the place is run philanthropically. I--I hadn't quite realized
it before."

"What did you think?"

"I knew that the--one who was running it wasn't quite sure where she
was coming out, but I didn't think of it is an eleemosynary
institution."

"Of course, it is."

"It's an unscrupulous sort of charity, th