At six o’clock, Myrtle Popper tucked her arm under King O’Leary’s and tripped out as joyfully as though she were carrying him away forever into regions of blue skies and green islands.

“Now you’ve got me, where are you going to take me, or, rather, where am I going to take you?” said O’Leary warily, for he had pondered much over the object of the evening and had become suspicious. Myrtle’s light-heartedness and her eagerness did not fit exactly into the rÔle of a maiden in distress. Still, you could never tell with women.

“Sure, are you objectin’ to a good-looking girl hanging on your arm,” said Myrtle, laughing with the delight of having accomplished her object. “Shall we go down the stairs or wait for that poky old elevator?”

“Thank you; we’ll take the elevator,” said O’Leary hastily. “You’re a deal too dashing and flashing to-night, Myrtle darlin’.”

“Now, just what are you insinuatin’ by that?” said the girl, her glowing eyes belying the sternness of her words.

“I mean that I wouldn’t be down the first flight but my arm would be slipping around your waist. Now, don’t be looking at me like that; it’s yourself is to blame.”

The color came suddenly into her cheeks.

“You don’t really care?” she said softly.

King O’Leary laughed and pressed the electric button a second time so that the buzzing sound filled the shaft, while his companion stamped her foot and turned away petulantly.

Sassafras emerged with rolling eyes.

“Our chauffeur is waiting?” said O’Leary, adopting the methods of Tootles.

“Yassir—yassir,” said Sassafras, whom nothing astonished. “And Mrs. Van Astorbilt am reclinin’ in de car.”

“Well, what are you going to do with me?” said O’Leary, continuing in the light tone as a precautionary measure until the attack had shown its purpose.

“Do I have to tell you where to dine?” said Myrtle scornfully.

O’Leary performed a careful search of his pockets.

“We might buck the high places, if you ain’t too ravenous!”

She shrugged her shoulders, and, disdaining to answer his levity, led him down Columbus Avenue to Rossi’s, where, it being early, they found a deserted corner, and O’Leary took up the menu with an occasional stolen glance at his companion, who had become strangely silent.

“Minestrone and—hello, here’s luck!” he said. “Gnocci Milanese! Ever tasted them? They’re grand!”

“All right; I don’t care,” said the girl, without shifting her eyes.

“Ravioli and a sweet, and don’t annoy us with any olives,” said O’Leary to the waiter. “Quite a place!”

He turned for an inspection of the restaurant known to a chosen few. Across the room, a party of Italians and Spaniards from the Opera were finishing an early supper.

“Say, that’s Marino and de Segga,” said O’Leary, in a whisper, indicating the reigning tenor and the famous baritone.

“I don’t care,” said his companion sharply.

King O’Leary, perceiving that the issue could no longer be avoided, said:

“Say, you do look awful serious.”

“I told you it was serious, didn’t I?”

“Yes; and you’ve got me guessing!”

Something in his tone made her draw back and consider. Presently she said:

“Wonder just what you thought I could have meant by—serious!”

O’Leary balanced his knife on his finger thoughtfully, and finally decided to answer.

“I was kind of worried.”

“How so?”

“Well, I didn’t know,” he said slowly, “but what you might have been getting in—in too deep.”

“Into trouble?”

“Yes; into trouble—you see a queer side of life. It isn’t every girl can steer a clear course.”

“Yes; I’ve taken chances,” she said and stopped. She looked at him with anxious scrutiny. “King, suppose it were so?”

“What do you mean?” he said, frowning.

“Suppose I have got in too deep—deeper than I mean to go?” She looked down at her hands. “What then?”

He looked up sharply, then smiled.

“It ain’t so.”

“Suppose it were?” she said breathlessly.

“It ain’t so,” he repeated quietly. He leaned over and patted her hand. “I know you, girl; you’re not that kind.”

“There’s lots of temptations.”

“Not for you,” he said, reassured in his conviction. “You’re straight, and you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

“That doesn’t always hold.”

“It does with you. Whatever you’ll do, Myrtle, you’ll do just what you’ve planned out and what your head tells you to do.”

“I don’t know as I like that,” she said, frowning at the implication that she was not of feminine frailty.

“Well, it’s true.”

“You don’t think I can be carried away, then?” she said, with a heightened flush. “You’re the last to say that.”

Luckily, the arrival of the minestrone broke in upon a delicate subject, and the conversation, subject to the censorship of the waiter, became desultory. Dinner over, she leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her eyes full on his face, and said:

“King, shall I marry Mr. Pomello?”

He was so astonished that she herself could not repress a smile.

“Say that again,” he said, bewildered.

“I want your advice. Ought I to marry Mr. Pomello?”

“What the devil do you want to marry an old crutch for?” he said, more irritated than he would have believed possible. “Has he asked you?”

“Twenty times—I’ve been putting him off. It’s got to be yes or no to-night, and that’s no jolly. It’s take it or leave it.”

“Why the deuce do you come to me?”

“Because,” she said softly, “you’re the only one I can go to, and, King, it’s a big decision.”

“I don’t see why you want to marry him,” he said slowly. “He’s got money, I suppose.” She nodded. “Much?”

“How much should you say?”

“Oh, forty or fifty thousand.”

“More than that.”

“A hundred.”

“Higher.”

“Come off!”

“King, Mr. Pomello’s worth between three and four hundred thousand. Say, I’m not throwing a bluff. Straight goods. He told me so, offered to prove it.”

“How the devil——”

“Made it in moving pictures. He got in on the ground floor, and, King, if I marry him, he’ll make a will and leave it all to me.”

O’Leary was silent, staring at her. The thought of the price she might command seemed to make her a thousand times more desirable. He even felt a pang of jealousy.

“Gee, this is serious!” he said, and, being in a quandary, he rapped loudly on the table and selected the biggest cigar which was brought him.

Myrtle Popper was watching him with excited glance, her breath coming and going more rapidly as she noted the perturbation caused by the announcement.

“Of course, it ain’t a question of love,” he said more quietly, as he felt himself fortified behind a cloud of fragrant smoke.

“Not on my part.”

“Do you think you can carry it through?” he said, with frank curiosity. Down in his heart he was wondering at the insensibility of women in the very things in which men give them the greatest reverence.

“He’s kind, very kind,” she said, reflecting. “He’ll do anything I want, and, King, it sounds cold-blooded—but he’s over sixty, and he ain’t strong at that.”

“Gee!” said O’Leary.

Neither spoke for a long moment.

“It is cold-blooded,” he said, at last.

“It’s a bargain,” she said abruptly, shrugging her shoulders. “He wants me; he’s getting what he wants. If he sees it that way, why, it’s square enough.”

“Does he see it that way?”

“I’ve been honest. I’ve told him what I tell you. It’s understood like that between us.”

“Why do you even hesitate?” he said.

She stared beyond him.

“It would be hard,” she said simply, and looked at him with half-closed eyes.

He was so astonished at the disclosure that she had made that he felt like repeating his questions, to convince himself that what she had told him could be true, that this girl manicurist from Joey Shine’s barber shop could, for a nod of her head, leap forward a dozen generations.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, at last.

“I don’t suppose many girls in my position would have put him off this way,” she said meditatively. “There ain’t much to look ahead to in the manicuring line—a few years of good looks and being taken out, and then just sitting around.”

“And if you marry, why, it means even more work, don’t it,” he said, “cooking and the housework—and the kids. No; I can’t see as there are two sides to it.”

“There are two sides, though,” she said, and she drew a great breath that went through her young, glorious body. She drew back and stretched out her arms as though every muscle had risen in protest. “But a girl can’t be doing the askin’, you see.”

He remained frowning at the cloth so long that she said:

“Did you hear what I said?”

He nodded.

“And you remember what I said to you that afternoon about settling down and home and all the rest?”

“The afternoon I kissed you?”

Her face went red, and she turned away all at once. A wave of pity went through him that he should have been tempted by his vanity, for he knew that it lay no deeper than that. He swore at himself and said:

“So you’ve come to me for advice?”

She turned quickly.

“And what do you say?” she said, so low that he could scarcely distinguish it.

“Do you mean if I told you not to do it, you’d chuck it to the winds?”

She started twice to answer and stopped. Finally, she said:

“If you told me your reason—I would.”

“Myrtle, you did right to come to me,” he said decisively. “This is my answer: Placed as you are, with what’s ahead, there’s no two ways about it—it’s too big, too wonderful. Marry him!”

She did not move. The words seemed to have left so little impression on her that he was wondering if she had understood them, when, all at once, she looked up and said:

“You mean that?”

“I do.”

She rose, nodded to him to follow, and went out of the restaurant. They walked home in silence, and she did not take his arm. In the Arcade, by the brass entrance of the Gloria Theater, he turned to her abruptly, conscience-stricken, and yet fortified by the thought that he had been square enough not to stand in her way.

“What are you going to say to him?” he said anxiously, taking the hand which she gave him heavily. She turned and he saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

“Look here,” he said miserably; “I’ve been honest with you, Myrtle.”

“Yes; you’ve been that,” she said, and, with a nod, she hurried away.