“Isn’t it exquisite?” she murmured.

He laughed shortly.

“Give me The Chocolate Soldier,” he declared.  “Worth a dozen of this!”

Suddenly she realized what had happened.  Her anger and resentment faded away.  For the first time she wholly and entirely believed his story.  For the first time she felt that this miracle had come to pass.  She was no longer ashamed of him.  She no longer harbored any small feelings of resentment at his ill-bred attitude.  A profound sympathy swept up from her heart—­sympathy for him, sympathy, too, for herself.  When they passed out together she was as sweet to him as possible, though he put on a black bowler hat some time before it was necessary, and though his red handkerchief became very much in evidence.

“You will drive me down to Chelsea, won’t you?” she begged.

“Righto!” he replied.  “I’ll get one of these chaps to fetch a taxi.”

He succeeded in obtaining one, gleeful because he had outwitted some prior applicant to whom the cab properly belonged.

“Couldn’t stop somewhere and have a little supper, could we?” he asked.

“I am afraid not,” she answered.  “It wouldn’t be quite the thing.”

He tried to take her hand.  After a moment’s hesitation she permitted it.

“Mr. Burton,” she said softly, “do answer me one question.  Did you part with all your beans?”

His hand went up to his forehead for a moment.

“Yes,” he replied, “both of them.  I only had two, and it didn’t seem worth while keeping one.  Got my pockets full of money, too, and they are going to make me a director of Menatogen.”

“Do you feel any different?” she asked him.

He looked at her in a puzzled way and, striking a match, lit a cigarette without her permission.

“Odd you should ask that,” he remarked.  “I do feel sort of queer to-night—­as though I’d been ill, or something of the sort.  There are so many things I can only half remember—­at least I remember the things themselves, but the part I took in them seems so odd.  Kind of feeling as though I’d been masquerading in another chap’s clothes,” he added, with an uneasy little laugh.  “I don’t half like it.”

“Tell me,” she persisted, “did you really find the music tiresome?”

He nodded.

“Rather,” he confessed.  “The Chocolate Soldier is my idea of music.  I like something with a tune in it.  There’s been no one to beat Gilbert and Sullivan.  I don’t know who wrote this Samson and Delilah, but he was a dismal sort of beggar, wasn’t he?  I like something cheerful.  Don’t you want to come and have some supper, Edith?  I know a place where they play all the popular music.”

“No, thank you,” she told him gravely.

“You seem so cold and sort of stand-offish to-night,” he complained, coming a little closer to her.  “Some of those nights down at your place—­can’t remember ’em very well but I am jolly sure you were different.  What’s happened?  Mayn’t I hold your fingers, even?”