er woes before that wholly sympathetic audience of
one.

It was not until they reached the Eastern Parkway and were speeding
toward the twinkling lights of the city that their little bubble of
intimacy, blown in the moonlight, was shattered by a word.

"Say, Miss Eleanor," Quin blurted out unexpectedly, "do you like me?"

The question, together with the fact that he had dared used her first
name, brought her up with a start.

"Like you?" she repeated in her most conventional tone, "Why, of course.
Whatever made you think I didn't?"

"I didn't think that. But--do you like me enough to let me come to see
you when you come back?"

Now, a romantically wounded hero receiving favors in a hospital is one
thing, and an unknown discharged soldier asking them is quite another.
The very thought of Quinby Graham presenting himself as a caller, and the
comments that would follow made Eleanor shy away from the subject in
alarm.

"Oh, you'll be on the other side of the world by the time I get back,"
she said lightly.

"Not me. Not if there's a chance of seeing you again."

A momentary diversion followed, during which Eleanor fancied there was
something wrong with the radiator and expatiated at length on her
preference for air-cooled cars.

Quin listened patiently. A gentleman more versed in social subtleties
would have accepted the hint and said no more. But he was still laboring
under the error that language was invented to reveal rather than to
conceal thought.

"You didn't answer my question," he said, when Eleanor paused for breath.

"What question?"

"About my coming to see you."

She took shelter in a subterfuge.

"I told you that the family was horrid to everybody that came to see me.
To tell you the truth, I don't think you would be comfortable."

"I'm not afraid of 'em," Quin insisted fatuously. "I'd butt in anywhere
to get to see you."

Eleanor's eyes dropped under his gaze.

"You don't know my grandmother," she said; "and, what is much more
important, she doesn't know you."

"No, but she might like to," urged Quin, with one of his most engaging
smiles. "Old ladies and cats always cotton to me."

Eleanor laughed. It was impossible to be dignified and superior with a
person who didn't know the first rules of the game.

"She might," she admitted; "you never can tell about grandmother. She
really is a wonderful person in many ways, and just as generous and kind
when you are in trouble! But she says t