glad. I'm alone in a furnished room I've taken--out near
Lincoln Park."

"Alone! You don't mean you're still wandering?"

"Still wandering."

He laughed. "Well, it certainly is doing you no harm. The
reverse." An embarrassed pause, then he said with returning
politeness: "Maybe you'll dine with me this evening?"

She beamed. "I've been hoping you'd ask me."

"It won't be as good as the one on the rock."

"There never will be another dinner like that," declared she.
"Your leg is well?"

Her question took him by surprise. In his interest and wonder as
to the new mystery of this mysterious young person he had not
recalled the excuses he made for dropping out of the
entanglement in which his impulses had put him. The color poured
into his face. "Ages ago," he replied, hurriedly. "I'd have
forgotten it, if it hadn't been for you. I've never been able to
get you out of my head." And as a matter of truth she had
finally dislodged his cousin Nell--without lingering long or
vividly herself. Young Mr. Spenser was too busy and too
self-absorbed a man to bother long about any one flower in a
world that was one vast field abloom with open-petaled flowers.

"Nor I you," said she, as pleased as he had expected, and
showing it with a candor that made her look almost the child he
had last seen. "You see, I owed you that money, and I wanted to
pay it."

"Oh--_that_ was all!" exclaimed he, half jokingly. "Wait here a
minute." And he went to the door, looked up and down the street,
then darted across it and disappeared into the St. Nicholas
Hotel. He was not gone more than half a minute.

"I had to see Bayne and tell him," he explained when he was with
her again. "I was to have dined with him and some others--over
in the cafe. Instead, you and I will dine upstairs. You won't
mind my not being dressed?"

It seemed to her he was dressed well enough for any occasion.
"I'd rather you had on the flannel trousers rolled up to your
knees," said she. "But I can imagine them."

"What a dinner that was!" cried he. "And the ride afterward,"
with an effort at ease that escaped her bedazzled eyes. "Why
didn't you ever write?"

He expected her to say that she did not know his address, and
was ready with protests and excuses. But she replied:

"I didn't have the money to pay what I owed you." They were
crossing Fourth Street and ascending the steps to the hotel.
"Then, too--afterward--when I got to know a little