ys
do treat me right."

While he had been talking on and on, Susan had been appealing
to the champagne to help her quiet her aching heart. She
resolutely set her thoughts to wandering among the couples at
the other tables in that subdued softening light--the
beautifully dressed women listening to their male companions
with close attention--were they too being bored by such trash
by way of talk? Were they too simply listening because it is
the man who pays, because it is the man who must be conciliated
and put in a good humor with himself, if dinners and dresses
and jewels are to be bought? That tenement attic--that hot
moist workroom--poverty--privation--"honest work's" dread
rewards----

"Now, what kind of a man would you say I was?" Gideon was inquiring.

"How do you mean?" replied Susan, with the dexterity at vagueness
that habitually self-veiling people acquire as an instinct.

"Why, as a man. How do I compare with the other men you've
known?" And he "shot" his cuffs with a gesture of careless
elegance that his cuff links might assist in the picture of the
"swell dresser" he felt he was posing.

"Oh--you--you're--very different."

"I _am_ different," swelled Gideon. "You see, it's this
way----" And he was off again into another eulogy of himself;
it carried them through the dinner and two quarts of champagne.
He was much annoyed that she did not take advantage of the
pointed opportunity he gave her to note the total of the bill;
he was even uncertain whether she had noted that he gave the
waiter a dollar. He rustled and snapped it before laying it
upon the tray, but her eyes looked vague.

"Well," said he, after a comfortable pull at an
expensive-looking cigar, "sixteen seventy-five is quite a
lively little peel-off for a dinner for only two. But it was
worth it, don't you think?"

"It was a splendid dinner," said Susan truthfully.
Gideon beamed in intoxicated good humor. "I knew you'd like
it. Nothing pleases me better than to take a nice girl who
isn't as well off as I am out and blow her off to a crackerjack
dinner. Now, you may have thought a dollar was too much to tip
the waiter?"

"A dollar is--a dollar, isn't it?" said Susan.

Gideon laughed. "I used to think so. And most men wouldn't
give that much to a waiter. But I feel sorry for poor devils
who don't happen to be as lucky or as brainy as I am. What do
you say to a turn in the Park? We'll take a hansom, and kind
of jog alo