Whereupon the girl took charge of the arrangements. She seated Paige quite near the piano, took possession of him as if he were her personal guest, and proceeded to exercise her arts on him, smiling insinuatingly, lifting her wide big eyes and throwing herself into musical lingo, asking what he wanted her to play.

Paige responded politely, asking her to choose what it should be, and she proceeded to play, not so well, but not so badly, and as she played the young man studied her.

She was pretty and graceful, yes, and he wondered at himself that he was not attracted by her, not flattered at her efforts to interest him.

But Reva was smart, and she realized the instant that she was losing the interest of the young man. She was using her usual arts, and they hadn’t worked. What was he, anyway? The uniformed men she had been familiar with had been most amenable to flirtation, and she knew she was attractive. Her mirror told her so.

Suddenly she tried another line.

“Let’s go over to a nightclub and have a little time of it!” she said, happy as a child asking a favor. “I’m bored to death, and so are you. You might as well own it. We can take my car and have the time of our lives.”

He gave her a swift, comprehensive look, and then, with a glance at the great clock, which was ticking away across the room, he said, “Sorry to have to be saying no all the time, but you see, I’m not your type. Those things wouldn’t interest me. And besides, I must be getting home. I’m a working man, remember, and I have to be at my desk in the morning. It’s too bad I have to be so unsatisfactory, but that’s how it is. Thank you very much for exerting yourself to be entertaining.”

Then he rose from his seat and began to excuse himself and say good night.

But even then she didn’t give up. She followed him to the hall and with her loveliest smile offered, “I’ll drive you home if you like. That will be easier than going on the bus.”

“Thank you,” he answered coolly, “but I have my own car down the street.”

“Oh!” she said with a crestfallen pout. “You don’t like me, do you?”

He gave her a boyish grin with a lifting of his eyebrows.

“I didn’t say that, did I? I scarcely know you, you know.”

And then he was gone.

Chapter 3

Well, upon my word! Isn’t he the most crude number you saw!” said Reva, staring at the door out which he had vanished. “You’ll have to get rid of him, Dad! I can’t get anywhere at all with him.”

“I don’t know that you were asked to get anywhere with him,” said her father coldly. “His province is the office, and yours is not. It’s time you understood that. I don’t want you coming down to the office any time you choose and barging in, making a scene about your ‘debts of honor’ right in public.”

“Now Dad, that isn’t fair of you! Didn’t I stay at home from an important date to amuse your guest, and he turned out just to be a boor. That’s all he is. A boor who doesn’t know how to treat a lady. You certainly ought to get rid of him and find somebody more adaptable to our family if you are going to force your office people on the family.”

“Stop!” said the father. “It is not your place to run my business for me, and when I tell you that I am having a guest and want your help to entertain, I want you to do so without a question. You are still my daughter, and I have always been reasonable with you. You have no call to behave in this way. Why you should presume to criticize that young man when you can talk as you have to your own father, I don’t understand.”

Then the mother rose up to the defense of her child.

“And I don’t understand why you are speaking this way to your daughter, Harris. It is unforgivable of you to find fault with her in that tone of voice when you know she gave up something she planned for several days just to please you. And why you should want her to waste her time on a young man who didn’t pay the slightest attention to her, I can’t understand. She gave up an important engagement to please you.