“Not very much,” he confessed.  “It comes somehow and goes every way.”

“You give the effect of spending it with graceful ease.  Have you got much?”

“A little dribble of an income of my own.  I make, I suppose, about a quarter of what your salary is.”

“One doesn’t readily imagine you ever being scrimped.  You give the effect of pros—­no, not of prosperity; of—­well—­absolute ease.  It’s quite different.”

“Much nicer.”

“Do you know what they call you, around town?”

“Didn’t know I had attained the pinnacle of being called anything, around town.”

“They call you the best-dressed first-nighter in New York.”

“Oh, damn!” said Banneker fervently.

“That’s fame, though.  I know plenty of men who would give half of their remaining hairs for it.”

“I don’t need the hairs, but they can have it.”

“Then, too, you know, I’m an asset.”

“An asset?”

“Yes.  To you, I mean.”  She pursed her fingers upon the tip of her firm little chin and leaned forward.  “Our being seen so much together.  Of course, that’s a brashly shameless thing to say.  But I never have to wear a mask for you.  In that way you’re a comfortable person.”

“You do have to furnish a diagram, though.”

“Yes?  You’re not usually stupid.  Whether you try for it or not—­and I think there’s a dash of the theatrical in your make-up—­you’re a picturesque sort of animal.  And I—­well, I help out the picture; make you the more conspicuous.  It isn’t your good looks alone—­you’re handsome as the devil, you know, Ban,” she twinkled at him—­“nor the super-tailored effect which you pretend to despise, nor your fame as a gun-man, though that helps a lot....  I’ll give you a bit of tea-talk:  two flappers at The Plaza.  ’Who’s that wonderful-looking man over by the palm?’—­’Don’t you know him?  Why, that’s Mr. Banneker.’—­’Who’s he; and what does he do?  Have I seen him on the stage?’—­’No, indeed!  I don’t know what he does; but he’s an ex-ranchman and he held off a gang of river-pirates on a yacht, all alone, and killed eight or ten of them.  Doesn’t he look it!’”

“I don’t go to afternoon teas,” said the subject of this sprightly sketch, sulkily.

“You will!  If you don’t look out.  Now the same scene several years hence.  Same flapper, answering same question:  ’Who’s Banneker?  Oh, a reporter or something, on one of the papers.’ Et voila tout!”

“Suppose you were with me at the Plaza, as an asset, several years hence?”

“I shouldn’t be—­several years hence.”

Banneker smiled radiantly.  “Which I am to take as fair warning that, unless I rise above my present lowly estate, that waxing young star, Miss Raleigh, will no longer—­”

“Ban!  What right have you to think me a wretched little snob?”

“None in the world.  It’s I that am the snob, for even thinking about it.  Just the same, what you said about ‘only a reporter or something’ struck in.”