to meet her, glanced back at Bruce with a
smile of malice but it was wasted upon Bruce, who was looking at the
girl. Why should there be that lurking horror and hostility in her eyes?
What had Sprudell told her? On a sudden desperate impulse and before
Sprudell could stop him, he walked up to her and asked doggedly, though
his temerity made him hot and cold:

"Why do you look at me as if I were an enemy? What has Sprudell been
telling you?"

"I forbid you to answer this fellow--" Sprudell's voice shook and his
pink face had again taken on the curious chalkiness of color which it
became under stress of feeling. Forgetting prudence, his deferential
pose, forgetting everything that he should have remembered in his rage
at Bruce's hardihood, and the fear of exposure, he shook his finger
threateningly before Helen's face.

On the instant her chin went haughtily in the air and there was a
dangerous sparkle in her eyes as she replied:

"You are presumptuous, Mr. Sprudell. Your manner is offensive--_very_."

He ignored her resentment and laid his hand none too gently upon her
arm, as though he would have turned her forcibly toward the door. The
action, the familiarity it implied, incensed her.

"Take your hand away," Helen said quietly but tensely.

"I tell you not to talk to him!" But he obeyed.

"I intend to hear what Mr. Burt has to say."

"You mean that?"

"I do."

"Then you'll listen alone," he threatened. "You can get home the best
you can."

"Suit yourself about that," Helen replied coolly. "There are taxicabs at
the door and the cars run every six minutes."

Bruce contributed cordially:

"Sprudell, you just dust along whenever you get ready."

"You'll repent this--both of you!" His voice shook with chagrin and
fury--"I'll see to that if it takes the rest of my life and my last
dollar."

Bruce warned in mock solicitude:

"Don't excite yourself, it's bad for your heart; I can tell that from
your color."

Sprudell's answer was a malignant look from one to the other.

"On the square," said Bruce ruefully when the last turn of the revolving
door had shut Sprudell into the street, "I hadn't an idea of stirring up
anything like this when I spoke to you."

"It doesn't matter," Helen answered coldly. "It will disabuse his mind
of the notion that he has any claim on me."

"It did look as though he wanted to give that impression."

Bruce was absurdly pleased to find himself alone with her, but Helen's