way.

"You know I told you that I should _always_ be glad to see you,
Nance." Then, abruptly: "I hope you haven't caught cold standing here
waiting. It's not warm to-night. Shall we go inside now?" Nancy
nodded, and Phil led the way into Scarlatti's.

She took the whole room in at a glance, and breathed a sigh of
contentment so long, so deep, that it must have come from the tips of
her toes.

There was the same absurd little orchestra in their same absurd
"monkey clothes," the same motley crowd of half foreign, wholly happy
men and women, the same indescribable odor of un-American cooking--she
even rejoiced in _that_--and, best of all, on the long shelf that ran
around the four sides of the room were the same little, fat, bright
blue pitchers with great naming vermilion roses on either side. To be
sure, she knew that one was missing, but that was mere detail.

"Phil," Nancy whispered, eagerly, pulling his coat sleeve violently as
the waiter, with much bowing and scraping, started to lead the way in
another direction, "_our_ table is empty. Right over there--the tenth
from the door. We always had that one, you know, under the picture of
'The Girl with the Laughing Eyes.' I always remembered that it was the
tenth."

"Surely, we'll have the tenth, by all means." Phil tapped the waiter
on the back, and motioned in the direction of the empty table.

"I thought perhaps you'd rather not," he whispered to Nancy, as they
slipped into the old, familiar places. Evidently Phil had a memory for
numbers, too. So often it is only the woman who can _count ten_.

"Now," began Phil, as soon as the dinner had been ordered and other
preliminaries attended to, "tell me how on earth you and I happen to
be here together? Did you drop straight from the clouds? Or aren't you
here at all? Are you just a bit from a wildly improbable dream?"

"No," said Nancy, glibly, her equilibrium restored; "I'm spending the
night with Lilla Browning, and it suddenly occurred to me that it
would be fun for us to have dinner together." She paused a moment.
"Once more," she added, watching Phil's face closely. "And isn't it
just like that other time--the last time we were here together?" Phil
looked at her curiously. "The people, and the soft lights, and the
funny little musicians, and my meeting you----"

"Oh-h!" said Phil, quietly.

"And---and everything," finished Nancy, lamely.

"Don't you remember?" she went on. "The paper had sent you off on so