praise. His color heightened
and unconsciously he squared his shoulders.

"Thanks," he said. "Then you ought to trust me to be able to find
another lunch-place. Besides, you forget I found this myself. Are you
going to have an eclair to-day?"

She nodded and started to rise.

"Sit still; I'll get it for you."

Before she could protest he was halfway to the counter. She sat back
in her chair with an expression that was half-frown and half-smile.

When he came back she slipped a nickel upon the arm of his chair.

"What's this for?" he demanded.

"For the eclair, of course."

"You--you needn't have done that."

"I'll pay my own way, thank you," she answered, her face hardening a
little.

"Now you're offended again?"

"No; only--oh, can't you see we--I must find another place?"

"No, I don't," he answered.

"Then that proves it," she replied. "And now I'm going back to the
office."

He rose at once to go with her.

"Please to sit right where you are for five minutes," she begged.

He sat down again and watched her as she hurried out the door. The
moment she disappeared the place seemed curiously empty--curiously
empty and inane. He stared at the white-tiled walls, at the heaps of
pastry upon the marble counter, prepared as for wholesale. Yet, as
long as she sat here with him, he had noticed none of those details.
For all he was conscious of his surroundings, they might have been
lunching together in that subdued, pink-tinted room where he so often
took Frances.

He started as he thought of her. Then he smiled contentedly. He must
have Frances to lunch with him in the pink-tinted dining-room next
Saturday.

CHAPTER VI

TWO GIRLS

That night, when Miss Winthrop took her place in the Elevated on her
way to the uptown room that made her home, she dropped her evening
paper in her lap, and, chin in hand, stared out of the window. That
was decidedly unusual. It was so unusual that a young man who had
taken this same train with her month after month, and who had rather a
keen eye for such things, noticed for the first time that she had in
profile rather an attractive face. She was wondering just how
different this Pendleton was from the other men she met. Putting aside
for a moment all generalizations affecting the sex as a whole, he was
not like any of them. For the first time in a long while she found
herself inclined to accept a man for just what he appeared to be. It
was difficult not to be