The conversation died of dry-rot.  Carroll was not at all pleased.  His excuse—­the plea that he had come to call upon Evelyn—­had been taken too literally.  He had fancied—­in his blithe ignorance of the seventeen-year-old ladies of the present day—­that he could engineer himself into a worthwhile conversation with the Lawrences.  Since meeting them, he was doubly anxious.  There was a thinly veiled hostility about the man which demanded investigation.  And about the woman there was a subtle atmosphere of tragedy which appealed to the masculine protectiveness which surged strong in his bachelor breast.

But Carroll was a sportsman.  The girl had carried things her own way—­and he was too game to spoil her evening.  Therefore, he temporarily gave over all thought of a chat with the Lawrences and devoted himself to her amusement.  He informed her that the jazz music she had strummed was simply “glorious” and that he regretted he knew very little popular stuff.  She leaped upon his remark—­

“Oh! do you play:  really?”

He was in again.  “I have—­a little.”

“I wonder if you would?  Here’s the grandest little old song I bought downtown—­” and she placed on the piano a gaudy thing with the modest title—­“All Babies Need Daddies to Kiss ’Em.”  Its cover exposed a tender love scene wherein a gentleman in evening clothes was engaged in an act of violent osculation with a young lady whose dress was as short as her modesty.  Carroll shrugged, placed his long, slender fingers on the keys—­shook his head—­and went to it.

He played!  A genuine artist—­he tried to enter into the spirit of the thing and succeeded admirably.  The itchy syncopation rocked the room.  His hostess snapped her fingers deliciously and executed a few movements of a dance which Carroll had heard referred to vaguely as the shimmy.  In the midst of the revelry he gave thought to Eric Leverage and chuckled.

He played the chorus a second time—­then stopped on a crashing chord.  Evelyn’s face was beaming—­

“Gracious!  You can play, can’t you?”

“I used to—­Suppose we talk awhile.”

She agreed—­reluctantly.  They seated themselves in easy chairs before the gas logs.  Evelyn glanced hopefully at the chandelier.  “I wish the belt would slip at the power house, don’t you?”

“Why?” innocently.

“Oh! just because Bright lights are such a nuisance when a girl has a feller calling on her.  And these logs give a perfectly respectable light, don’t they?”

“Indeed they do—­but perhaps we’d better leave the others on.”

She sighed resignedly.  “I guess we’d better.  Sis is so darned proper and Gerald is an old crab—­they might say something.”

“I suppose they might.  By they way, didn’t they think it was—­er—­strange:  my coming to see you tonight?”

She turned red.  “Suppose they did—­what difference does that make?  I’m not a child and if a gentleman wants to call on me I guess they haven’t got any kick.”