"Why--why?" droned little Eve Edgarton perplexedly. Out from the
yellow heart of the pansy-blackness her small, grave, gnomish face
peered after him with pristine frankness. "Why--why--I think you
look--nice," said little Eve Edgarton.

With a really desperate effort Barton tried to clothe himself in
facetiousness, if in nothing else. "Oh, very well," he grinned feebly.
"If you don't mind--there's no special reason, I suppose, why I
should."

Vaguely, blurrishly, like a figure on the wrong side of a
stained-glass window, he began to loom up again into the lantern
light. There was no embarrassment certainly about his hunger, nor any
affectation at all connected with his thirst. Chokingly from the
battered silver cup he gulped down the scorching vodka. Ravenously he
attacked the salty meat, the sweet, cloying dates.

Watching him solemn-eyed above her own intermittent nibbles, the girl
spoke out quite simply the thought that was uppermost in her mind.
"This supper'll come in mighty handy, won't it, if we have to be out
here all night, Mr. Barton?"

"If we have to be out here--all night?" faltered Barton.

Oh, ye gods! If just their afternoon ride together had been hotel
talk--as of course it was within five minutes after their
departure--what would their midnight return be? Or rather their
non-return? Already through his addled brain he heard the monotonous
creak-creak of rocking-chair gossip, the sly jest of the smoking-room,