Van Bibber looked at Travers, and Travers smiled in some annoyance.  The electric bell rang violently from different floors, but the young man did not heed it.  He had halted the elevator between two landings, and he now seated himself on the velvet cushions and crossed one leg over the other, as though for a protracted debate.  Travers gazed about him in humorous apprehension, as though alarmed at the position in which he found himself, hung as it were between the earth and sky.

“I swear I am an unarmed man,” he said, in a whisper.

“Our intentions are well meant, I assure you,” said Van Bibber, with an amused smile.  “The girl is working ten hours a day for very little money, isn’t she?  You know she is, when she could make a great deal of money by working half as hard.  We have some influence with theatrical people, and we meant merely to put her in the way of bettering her position, and to give her the chance to do something which she can do better than many others, while almost any one, I take it, can sweep and make beds.  If she were properly managed, she could become a great dancer, and delight thousands of people—­add to the gayety of nations, as it were.  She’s hardly doing that now, is she?  Have you any objections to that?  What right have you to make objections, anyway?”

The young man regarded the two young gentlemen before him with a dogged countenance, but there was now in his eyes a look of helplessness and of great disquietude.

“We’re engaged to be married, Annie and me,” he said.  “That’s it.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Van Bibber, “I beg your pardon.  That’s different.  Well, in that case, you can help us very much, if you wish.  We leave it entirely with you!”

“I don’t want that you should leave it with me,” said the young man, harshly.  “I don’t want to have nothing to do with it.  Annie can speak for herself.  I knew it was coming to this,” he said, leaning forward and clasping his hands together, “or something like this.  I’ve never felt dead sure of Annie, never once.  I always knew something would happen.”

“Why, nothing has happened,” said Van Bibber, soothingly.  “You would both benefit by it.  We would be as willing to help two as one.  You would both be better off.”

The young man raised his head and stared at Van Bibber reprovingly.

“You know better than that,” he said.  “You know what I’d look like.  Of course she could make money as a dancer, I’ve known that for some time, but she hasn’t thought of it yet, and she’d never have thought of it herself.  But the question isn’t me or what I want.  It’s Annie.  Is she going to be happier or not, that’s the question.  And I’m telling you that she couldn’t be any happier than she is now.  I know that, too.  We’re just as contented as two folks ever was.  We’ve been saving for three months, and buying furniture from the instalment people, and next month we were going to move into a flat on Seventh Avenue,