ed a new and entirely harmless topic of
conversation. She knew why he did that. She understood now that there
was more on his program than his manner last night had indicated. That
had been a preliminary, but the past wasn't to be ignored forever. A
time was coming when the issue between them should be brought up and
settled. But the time was not now, nor the place this crowded
restaurant.

She was perfectly docile to his new conversational lead, but the fact
that she yielded, that she knew it would be beyond her powers to force
that issue until he was ready for it, thrilled her--brought the blood
into her cheeks. The thing he was doing might be absurd, but his way of
doing it was not absurd. He had changed, somehow, or something had
changed between them. She engaged all his powers. If there should be a
struggle now, his mind would not betray him.

Just before they left the restaurant he asked her if she would dine with
him some night and go to a show afterward, and when she said she would
he asked what night would be convenient to her.

Her inflection was perfectly demure and even casual, but nothing could
keep the sudden "richening" that Jimmy Wallace had tried to describe out
of her voice, and the light of mischief danced openly in her eyes when
she said:

"Why, to-night's all right for me." She added, "If that's not too soon
for you."

He flushed and dropped his hands from the edge of the table where they'd
been resting, but he answered evenly enough:

"No, it's not too soon for me."

And then force of habit betrayed Rose into a stupid blunder that almost
precipitated a small quarrel.

"Tell me what you'd like to see," she said, "and I'll telephone for the
seats."

Then, at his horrified stare, she gasped out an explanation. "Roddy, I
didn't mean _buy_ the seats! I don't have to buy seats at any theater.
And at this time of year they're so glad to have somebody to give them
to that it seems sort of--wicked to pay real money."

"It's my mistake," he said. "Naturally, going to the theater wouldn't be
much of a--treat to you. I'd forgotten that."

"Going with _you_ would be a treat to me," she said earnestly. "That's
why I didn't think about the other part of it. But I needn't have been
so stupid as that. Will you forget I said it, please?"

He smiled now at himself, the first smile of genuine amusement she had
seen on his lips for--how long?

"And I needn't have been quite so horrified," he admitted.