“You’d not get it now, young feller, if you was to go down on your knees with a thousand dollars in each hand,” asserted the offended Estate.

“See!” said the young man to the butterfly.  “Fate decides for you.”

“But what will you do?” she asked solicitously.

“Perhaps I can find some other place in the Square.”

She held out her hand.  “You’ve been very nice and helpful, but—­I think not.  Good-bye.”

He regarded the hand blankly.  “Not—­what?”

“Not here in this Square, if you don’t mind.”

“But where else is there?” he asked piteously.  “You know yourself there are countless thousands of homeless drifters floating around on this teeming island in vans, with no place to land.”

“Try Jersey.  Or Brooklyn,” was her hopeful suggestion.

  “’And bade betwixt their shores to be
  The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea,’”

he quoted with dramatic intonation, adding helpfully:  “Matthew Arnold.  Or is it Arnold Bennett?  Anyway, think how far away those places are,” he pleaded.  “From you!” he concluded.

A little decided frown crept between her eyebrows.  “I’ve accepted you as a gentleman on trust,” she began, when he broke in: 

“Don’t do it.  It’s a fearfully depressing thing to be reminded that you’re a gentleman on trust and expected to live up to it.  Think how it cramps one’s style, not to mention limiting one’s choice of real estate.  A gentleman may stake his future happiness and his hope of a home on the toss of a coin, but he mustn’t presume to want to see the other party to the gamble again, even if she’s the only thing in the whole sweep of his horizon worth seeing.  Is that fair?  Where is Eternal Justice, I ask you, when such things—­”

“Oh, do stop!” she implored.  “I don’t think you’re sane.”

“No such claim is put forth on behalf of the accused.  He confesses to complete loss of mental equilibrium since—­let me see—­since 11.15 A.M.”

Here the Mordaunt Estate, who had been doing some shrewd thinking on his own behalf, interposed.

“I’d rather rent to two than one,” he said insinuatingly.  “More reliable and steady with the rent.  Settin’ aside the young feller’s weak eyes, you’re a nice-matched pair.  Gittin’ a license is easy, if you know the ropes.  I’d even be glad to go with you to—­”

“As to not being married,” broke in the butterfly, with the light of a great resolve in her eye, “this gentleman may speak for himself.  I am.”

“Am what?” queried the Estate.

“Married.”

“Damn!” exploded the young man.  “I mean, congratulations and all that sort of thing.  I—­I’m really awfully sorry.  You’ll forgive my making such an ass of myself, won’t you?”