"Nothing doing. I've got my seat. I am going when I've had my dinner
comfortably. There's fried chicken coming and no considerations of
friendship would induce me to hurry away from it."

Nora sighed plaintively.

"There is no doubt about it, women do lack the sporting instinct," she
lamented. "Now if we'd both been men, and Mr. Tallente a charming
woman, I should have just given you a wink, you would have muttered
something clumsy about an appointment, shuffled off and finished your
dinner elsewhere."

"Our sex isn't capable of such sacrifices," Susan declared, leaning back
to enable the waiter to fill her glass. "There's the champagne, too."

The meal came to a conclusion with scarcely another serious word. Susan
departed in due course, and Tallente called for his bill, a short time
afterwards, with a feeling of absolute reluctance.

"Shall we try and get in at a show somewhere?" he suggested.

She shook her head.

"Not to-night. Four nights a week I go to bed early and this is one of
them. Let's escape, if we can, before Mr. Miller can make his way over
here. I know he'll try and have coffee with us or something."

Tallente was adroit and they left the restaurant just as Miller was
rising to his feet. Nora sprang into the waiting taxi with a little
laugh of triumph and drew her skirts on one side to make room for her