Nancy half ashamed of her boldness in putting the
question, half possessed of a madness to know the answer at any cost.

"I've discovered something very interesting," Collier Pratt said,
after an interval in which Nancy felt that he was perfectly cognizant
of her struggle with her curiosity; "in fact, it's one of the most
interesting discoveries that I have made in the course of a not
unadventurous life. Do you come to this restaurant often?"

"Quite often," Nancy equivocated, "earlier in the day. For luncheon
and for tea."

"I come here almost every night of my life," Collier Pratt declared,
"and I intend to continue to come so long as _le bon Dieu_ spares me
my health and my epicurean taste. You know that I spoke of the food
here before. The character of it has changed entirely. It's
unmistakably French now, not to say Parisian. Outside of Paris or
Vienna I have never tasted such soups, such sauce, such delicate and
suggestive flavors. My entire existence has been revolutionized by the
experience. I am no longer the lonely and unhappy man you discovered
at this gate a short month ago. I can not cavil at an America that
furnishes me with such food as I get in this place.

"Man may live without friends, and may live without books.
But civilized man can not live without cooks,"

Nancy quoted sententiously.

"Exactly. The whole point is that the cooking here is civilized. Oh!
you ought to come here to dinner, my friend. I don't know what the
luncheons and teas are like--"

"They're very good," Nancy said.

"But not like the dinners, I'll wager. The dinners are the very last
word! I don't know why this place isn't famous. Of course, I do my
best to keep it a secret from the artistic rabble I know. It would be
overrun with them in a week, and its character utterly ruined."

"I wonder if it would."

"Oh! I'm sure of it."

"What is your discovery?" Nancy asked.

Collier Pratt leaned dramatically closer to her, and Nancy instinctively
bent forward across the tiny table until her face was very near to his.

"Do you know anything about the price of foodstuffs?" he demanded.

"A little," Nancy admitted.

"You know then that the price of every commodity has soared
unthinkably high, that the mere problem of providing the ordinary
commonplace meal at the ordinary commonplace restaurant has become
almost unsolvable to the proprietors? Most of the eating places in New
York are run at a loss, while the manag