“Yes, but just think of it. I feel it is my duty to save him.”
“Where did you come across him?”
“He is the new member of our firm. I told you about him long ago. The good-looking one. He has been with us six months, but I am just getting acquainted with him. We had luncheon together to-day, and he told me about it. He doesn’t like social butterflies at all, he likes clever, practical girls, with high ideals, and—”
“Like you, of course.”
“Yes, of course. I explained my theory to him, and he was perfectly enchanted with it. But he could not quite grasp it all in those few minutes—it is rather deep, you know—and so he is coming up to dinner to-night to make a thorough study of it. He feels it is his one last hope, and if it fails him, he is lost in the sea of a loveless marriage.”
“I do not object to your fishing him out of the loveless sea,” Nolan said plaintively. “But I do object to his eating the steak you promised me.”
“Think of the cause,” she begged. “Think of the glory of winning another duty-bound soul to the boundless principles of freedom. Think of—”
“I can’t think of anything, Eveley,” he said sadly, “except that good-looking fellow eating my steak, cooked by the hands of my er—girl.”
As a matter of fact, he took it very seriously. For while he was still firmly wedded to his ideal of fame and fortune, he was unceasingly haunted by the fearful nightmare of some interloper “beating his time,” as he crudely but patently expressed it.
He spent a long and dreary evening, followed by other evenings equally long and dreary, for the Good-Looking Young Member found great difficulty in mastering the intricacies of a Dutiless Life, and Eveley continued his education with the greatest patience, and some degree of pleasure.