"Of course—why not?"
"You want to know? Right now?"
He was looking at her with an expression that was never intended to be worn in a public conveyance, and the thin-faced Polish woman on whose toes they were all but standing looked at them with such lively comprehension that Eleanor felt called upon to assume her most haughty and dignified manner for the rest of the way.
Miss Linton's party was in full swing when they arrived. It was an extremely hilarious party, the interest centering about a fat man in a dress-suit, with a bath towel around his waist, who was attempting to distil a forbidden elixir from an ingenious condenser of his own invention.
The studio, under a grimy skylight, was cluttered with bric-à-brac, animate and inanimate. A Daibutsu in a gilded shrine dominated one corner, and a handsome woman in a Manchu coat and swinging ear-rings of jade held court in another. At sight of the Martel group she laid down the small silver pipe she was smoking, and swam toward them through a cloud of incense and tobacco smoke.
"Dear old C. M.! Bless his heart!" she cried, kissing Papa Claude effusively. Then she nodded good-naturedly to Eleanor, and held out a welcoming hand to Quin.
"Who is this nice boy?" she asked, her languid black eyes sweeping his face.
"Allow me to present ex-Sergeant Quinby Graham," said Papa Claude impressively—"a soldier of whom his friends and his country have every reason to be proud."
Then, to Quin's utter chagrin, he was conscious of the fact that Papa Claude was giving, in an audible aside, an account of his prowess that placed him second only to another sergeant whom the world acclaimed its chief hero.
"For the Lord's sake, head him off!" he whispered in an agony of embarrassment to Eleanor. "I didn't do half those things he's telling about, and besides——"