came rather to
give way before her and to let her monopolize him more and more.

It was during the third week that Professor Fruehlingsvogel was to
endure another birthday, and Bobby, full of generous impulses as
always, announced at rehearsal that in honor of the Professor's
unwelcome milestone he intended to give a little supper that night at
the hotel. Madam Villenauve, standing beside him, suddenly threw her
arms around his neck and kissed him smack upon the lips, with a quite
enthusiastic declaration, in very charmingly warped English, that he
was "a dear old sing." Bobby, reverting quickly in mind to the fact of
the extreme unconventionally of these people, took the occurrence
quite as a matter of course, though it embarrassed him somewhat. He
rather counted himself a prig that he could not sooner get over this
habit of embarrassment, and every time Madam Villenauve insisted on
calling him into her dressing-room when she was in much more of
dishabille than he would have thought permissible in ordinary people,
he felt that same painful lack of sophistication.

At the supper that night, Madam Villenauve, with a great show of
playful indignation, routed Madam Kadanoff from her accidental seat
next to Bobby, and, in giving up the seat, which she did quite
gracefully enough, Madam Kadanoff dropped some remark in choice
Russian, which, of course, Bobby did not understand, but which Madam
Villenauve did, for she laughed a little shrilly and, with an engaging
upward smile at Bobby, observed:

"I theenk I shall say it zat zees so chairming Monsieur Burnit is soon
to marry wiz me; ees eet not, monsieur?"

Whereupon Bobby, with his customary courtesy, replied:

"No gentleman would care to deny such a charming and attractive
possibility, Madam Villenauve."

But the gracious speech was of the lips alone, and spoken with a
warning glare against "kidding" at the grinning Biff Bates, who had
found business of urgent importance for that night in the city where
the company was booked. Bobby, in fact, had begun to tire very much of
the whole business. To begin with, he found the organization a much
more expensive one to keep up than he had imagined. The route, badly
laid out, was one of tremendous long jumps; of his singers, like other
rare and expensive creatures, extravagant care must be taken, and not
every place that they stopped was so eager for grand opera as it might
have been. At the end of three weeks he was able to