dering a dinner, and getting approximately
what you order, is not a delicate epicurean art, but a matter of
business, and not till an enormous platter of "Vance's Special Ham and
Eggs, Country Style," was slammed down between them, and catsup,
Worcestershire sauce, napkins, more rolls, water, and another fork
severally demanded of the darting waitress, did Walter seem to remember
that this was a romantic dinner with a strange girl, not a deal in
food-supplies.

His wavering black eyes searched her face. She was agitatedly aware that
her skin was broken out in a small red spot beside her lips; but she
hoped that he would find her forehead clear, her mouth a flower. He
suddenly nodded, as though he had grown used to her and found her
comfortable. While his wreathing hands picked fantastically at a roll
and made crosses with lumps of sugar, his questions probed at that
hidden soul which she herself had never found. It was the first time
that any one had demanded her formula of life, and in her struggle to
express herself she rose into a frankness which Panama circles of
courtship did not regard as proper to young women.

"What's your ambition?" he blurted. "Going to just plug along and not
get anywhere?"

"No, I'm not; but it's hard. Women aren't trusted in business, and you
can't count without responsibility. All I can do is keep looking."

"Go out for suffrage, feminism, so on?"

"I don't know anything about them. Most women don't know anything about
them--about anything!"

"Huh! Most _people_ don't! Wouldn't have office-grinding if people did
know anything.... How much training have you had?"

"Oh, public school, high school, commercial college."

"Where?"

"Panama, Pennsylvania."

"I know. About like my own school in Kansas--the high-school principal
would have been an undertaker if he'd had more capital.... Gee!
principal and capital--might make a real cunning pun out of that if I
worked over it a little. I know.... Go to church?"

"Why--why, yes, of course."

"Which god do you favor at present--Unitarian or Catholic or Christian
Science or Seventh-Day Advent?"

"Why, it's the same--"

"Now don't spring that 'it's the same God' stuff on me. It isn't the
same God that simply hones for candles and music in an Episcopal Church
and gives the Plymouth Brotherhood a private copyright revelation that
organs and candles are wicked."

"You're terribly sacrilegious."

"You don't believe any such thing. Or