good enough to work with me when I could not afford to have an
accompanist for more than two hours a day. We got into the way of
working together. He is a singer, too, and has his own career to look
after, but he still manages to give me some time. I want you to be
friends." She smiled from one to the other.

The rooms, Archie noticed, full of last night's flowers, were furnished
in light colors, the hotel bleakness of them a little softened by a
magnificent Steinway piano, white bookshelves full of books and scores,
some drawings of ballet dancers, and the very deep sofa behind the
piano.

"Of course," Archie asked apologetically, "you have seen the papers?"

"Very cordial, aren't they? They evidently did not expect as much as I
did. ELSA is not really in my voice. I can sing the music, but I have to
go after it."

"That is exactly," the doctor came out boldly, "what Fred Ottenburg said
this morning."

They had remained standing, the three of them, by the piano, where the
gray afternoon light was strongest. Thea turned to the doctor with
interest. "Is Fred in town? They were from him, then--some flowers that
came last night without a card." She indicated the white lilacs on the
window sill. "Yes, he would know, certainly," she said thoughtfully.
"Why don't we sit down? There will be some tea for you in a minute,
Landry. He's very dependent upon it," disapprovingly to Archie. "Now
tell me, Doctor, did you really have a good time last night, or were you
uncomfortable? Did you feel as if I were trying to hold my hat on by my
eyebrows?"

He smiled. "I had all kinds of a time. But I had no feeling of that
sort. I couldn't be quite sure that it was you at all. That was why I
came up here last night. I felt as if I'd lost you."

She leaned toward him and brushed his sleeve reassuringly. "Then I
didn't give you an impression of painful struggle? Landry was singing at
Weber and Fields' last night. He didn't get in until the performance was
half over. But I see the TRIBUNE man felt that I was working pretty
hard. Did you see that notice, Oliver?"

Dr. Archie looked closely at the red-headed young man for the first
time, and met his lively brown eyes, full of a droll, confiding sort of
humor. Mr. Landry was not prepossessing. He was undersized and clumsily
made, with a red, shiny face and a sharp little nose that looked as if
it had been whittled out of wood and was always in the air, on the scent
of something. Yet it w