ested all motion on that word, sat with the menu card,
which he had been twirling, immovable between his hands.

"Yes. If you want to jolt it to me good and hard that way. I guess
that is what it does mean."

"I suppose then that the crisis--last night--came about from your
little passage with the Chinese waiter? It happened while you were
out on the balcony didn't it?"

Bertram stared and glowed.

"Say, you're a wonder. You reach out and get things before they come
to you at all. That's just what did happen."

"And then? Or pardon me, I don't want you to tell me any more than
it's right for you to tell--any more than you feel like telling."

"Oh that's all right. Well, when we got outside it was the same old
song. She didn't care enough even to call me down. And like a fool I
came out with it. What's the use of telling what she said or what I
said? It was just the same way. She kept me dancing. She wouldn't say
yes and she wouldn't say no. She seemed anxious about only one thing.
She wanted to know if she'd been fair to me."

"I suppose she has--!" Kate brought this out as though he had put a
question to her. "And you want to know what I think?"

"I sure do."

"I think she cares--at least a little--shall I tell you all?"

Bertram, even in the hottest of this conversation, did not forget the
needs of his body. The waiter stood at his elbow. He rushed through
the order, and continued:

"I want to know everything."

"Well, to begin with--Bert Chester, you're a man."

"I didn't ask for hot air."

"That's all of that. You're an unfinished man. You--haven't had the
chance to get all the refinements which people like Eleanor Gray have
acquired. Do you see now? You've made it--you've been making it--all
for yourself. You had no fortune. It's splendid the way you worked to
get all these things. I know the story of how you got through college.
Everyone who knows you is proud of that. But--well Eleanor's mother
was rich and proud before she married, and her grandparents were
richer and prouder. Then she's lived a great deal alone; and she never
really blossomed out until she went abroad. So she learned her social
ways from Europeans. She's got a lot of British and Continental
ideas.

"With the rest of us, you know, it doesn't make any difference. You
could perceive that by the way we've taken you in. Why, it's really a
part of you. You're only two years out of college, hardly that; and
you're still studying la