plendid," she said. "The pre-view will be at 7:30, but can't you get
here earlier so we can have dinner together and talk?"

"At six, then," he suggested.

"At six," she assented.

He wondered why it was he felt relieved when she said that Gibson would
not be there with them.

It was dusk when he reached the studio a few minutes before six. She had
waited for him in her dressing room to which he was escorted by the
maid.

"There's a little place a few blocks away where we always go for dinner
when we're kept late," she said. "I discovered it myself. I delight in
finding little out-of-the-way places to eat. Reggie can't understand it.
He's uncomfortable every minute of the time we're there."

"You would have liked my father," he said. "Almost every week he treated
mother and me by taking us to dinner at some genuinely picturesque place
he had found. Sometimes it would be a little Spanish restaurant in
Sonora Town, sometimes an Italian cafe in North Broadway and sometimes a
French table de hote, which I liked best. Mother was like you say
Gibson is, uncomfortable every minute, but father and I enjoyed it
immensely. One night, when mother wasn't with us, we had tamales at one
of those wagon lunch places drawn up at the curb near the Plaza and
lighted by a sputtering kerosene range and a lantern that gave it an
appearance of being a ship's cabin. I'll never forget it."

"You miss your father greatly, don't you?" she said. The sympathy in her
voice was like soothing music.

"Everything in me that amounts to anything I owe to him," he said.

They walked to the "little place around the corner," as Consuello
referred to it. The dinner was served to them at a corner table in a
spotlessly clean room of "Mother" Graham's cafe, which was only large
enough to accommodate a dozen couples. The proprietress, "Mother"
Graham, who took as much pride in her cookery as the chef of the most
expensive cafe, greeted Consuello effusively.

"And how's my little darling, tonight?" she asked. "'Mother' Graham
shall serve you herself, for it's not every night that I see your dear
face."

The dinner was plain, appetizing home cooking; delicious brown chops,
crisp cool salad, fragrant coffee and hot rolls; berries and cream.
Once John caught a glimpse of "Mother" Graham pointing out Consuello to
a pop-eyed girl and her youthful escort as "Jean Hope."

"I am being envied," he said across the table.

"By whom?"

"By everyone who sees