for their clothes and self-conscious
coiffures, they were exactly like a gang of cracker-box loafers at
Heinie Rauskukle's badgering a new boy in town.

Saxton looked bad-tempered. Then Mrs. Corey bustled with her face and
yearned at Milt, "Do tell me: what is the theme of the opera tonight.
I've rather forgotten."

Milt ceased to smile. While all of them regarded him with interest he
said clearly, "I haven't got the slightest idea. I don't know anything
about music. Some day I hope I can get a clever woman like you to help
me, Mrs. Corey. It must be great to know all about all these arts, the
way you do. I wish you'd explain that--overture they call it, don't
they?"

For some reason, Mr. Gilson was snickering, Mrs. Corey flushing, Claire
looking well pleased. Milt had tried to be insulting, but had got lost
in the intricacies of the insult. He felt that he'd better leave it in
its apparently safe state, and he leaned back, and smiled again, as
though he was waiting. Mrs. Corey did not explain the overture. She
hastily explained her second maid, to Mrs. Gilson.

The opera was _Il Amore dei Tre Re_. Milt was bewildered. To him, who
had never seen an opera, the convention that a girl cannot hear a man
who is bellowing ten feet away from her, was absurd; and he wished that
the singers would do something besides making their arms swim.

He discovered that by moving his chair forward, he could get within a
foot of Claire. His hand slipped across, touched hers. She darted a
startled backward glance. Her fingers closed tight about his, then
restlessly snuggled inside his palm--and Milt was lost in enchantment.

Stately kings of blood-red cloaks and chrysoberyls malevolent in crowns
of ancient and massy gold--the quick dismaying roll of drums and the
shadow of passing banners below a tower--a woman tall and misty-veiled
and pale with dreams--a world of spirit where the soul had power over
unseen dominions--this he saw and heard and tasted in the music. What
the actual plot was, or the technique of the singing, he did not know,
but it bore him beyond all reality save the sweet, sure happiness of
Claire's nestling hand.

He held her fingers so firmly that he could feel the pulse beat in them.

* * * * *

In the clamminess of his room, when the enchantment was gone, he said
gravely:

"How much longer can I keep this up? Sooner or later I bust loose and
smash little Jeff one in the snoot,