Hawker heard a step and the soft swishing of a woman's dress. He turned toward the door swiftly, with a certain dramatic . But when she entered the room he said, "How delighted I am to see you again!"
She had said, "Why, Mr. Hawker, it was so charming in you to come!"
It did not appear that Hawker's tongue could wag to his purpose. The girl seemed in her mind to be her pack of social receipts and finding none of them made to meet this situation. Finally, Hawker said that he thought Hearts at War was a very good play.
"Did you?" she said in surprise. "I thought it much like the others."
"Well, so did I," he cried hastily—"the same figures moving around in the mud of modern confusion. I really didn't intend to say that I liked it. Fact is, meeting you rather moved me out of my mental track."
"Mental track?" she said. "I didn't know clever people had mental tracks. I thought it was a privilege of the theologians."
"Who told you I was clever?" he demanded.
"Why," she said, opening her eyes wider, "nobody."
Hawker smiled and looked upon her with . "Of course, nobody. There couldn't be such an idiot. I am sure you should be astonished to learn that I believed such an imbecile existed. But——"
"Oh!" she said.
"But I think you might have spoken less bluntly."
"Well," she said, after wavering for a time, "you are clever, aren't you?"
"Certainly," he answered .
"Well, then?" she retorted, with triumph in her tone. And this interrogation was to her the final argument.
At his Hawker grinned.
"You haven't asked news of Stanley," he said. "Why don't you ask news of Stanley?"
"Oh! and how was he?"
"The last I saw of him he stood down at the end of the pasture—the pasture, you know—wagging his tail in blissful
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