"There are a very few higher notches," he assured her, smiling, "than the one where you now sit enthroned."
Nora glanced at her wrist watch.
"Susan dear, what time do you have to join your friends?" she asked.
Susan shook her head.
"Nothing doing. I've got my seat. I am going when I've had my dinner comfortably. There's fried chicken coming and no considerations of friendship would induce me to hurry away from it."
Nora sighed plaintively.
"There is no doubt about it, women do lack the sporting instinct," she lamented. "Now if we'd both been men, and Mr. Tallente a charming woman, I should have just given you a wink, you would have muttered something clumsy about an appointment, shuffled off and finished your dinner elsewhere."
"Our sex isn't capable of such sacrifices," Susan declared, leaning back to enable the waiter to fill her glass. "There's the champagne, too."
The meal came to a conclusion with scarcely another serious word. Susan departed in due course, and Tallente called for his bill, a short time afterwards, with a feeling of absolute reluctance.
"Shall we try and get in at a show somewhere?" he suggested.