smopolitan. If so, she deemed it the
part of wisdom to remain provincial, for it had not escaped her notice
that since dinner her mental processes had undergone some subtle
change. For one thing, her sense of humor had quickened. Joe had
often maintained she had none. If Joe could see her now! No; that was
not her meaning precisely; but at any rate, it had quickened. How
every antic of the comedians appealed to her! The excessively tall and
the excessively short Germans who talked into one another's teeth; the
young person who sang coon songs in a fashion not negro, but all her
own; the giant with a boutonniere which a midget mounted a step-ladder
to spray; the famous plump beauty whom Shelby whispered she
resembled--all the merry-andrew company won her laughter and applause.

Once Shelby laid a restraining hand upon her arm, but she laughed the
more. When the curtain fell on the first act and the lights went up,
she was laughing still. She wondered why New Yorkers stared so.
Perhaps they, like Shelby, who had oddly shrunk into the shadows of the
box, thought she resembled the plump beauty for whom cigars were named.
She stared back at them collectively, for somehow they seemed to wear
one face. It was a thin, clean-shaven face, with keen eyes behind
glittering glasses; a familiar face--the face of the editor of the
_Tuscarora County Whig_.

CHAPTER X

"You had better walk to the hotel," Shelby suggested. With the darkening
of the theatre for the second act he had piloted his companion to the
street. "It's but a little way."

It proved a great way as he contrived it. Striking across town to one of
the quieter avenues they paced block after block in the teeth of a wind
which smacked of salt. At length Shelby brought their steps to a right
about and headed for their destination, just short of which his charge
abruptly halted with an hysterical in-take of breath.

"Not yet," she protested. "I can't go in yet. I must think it out here
with you. I daren't alone. I'm afraid of something--of myself--I don't
know what--"

The man bent a critical glance upon her.

"No; I guess you're not quite fit," he decided. "On we go."

"It's awful! He, of all people!"

"Bad mess."

"He could ruin me."

Shelby readily pictured a few ruins of his own, but chivalrously
refrained from their presentment. His predicament occurred to her,
however.

"And he could defeat you--"

"Never mind me."

"I can