"Does he—does your husband like your being alone like this?"
She laughed, a cheery young laugh.
"Oh, dear me, no. We were to meet for dinner but I must have misunderstood the place. He'll be awfully worried."
"Well," said Samuel disapprovingly, "he ought to be. If you'll allow me I'll see you home."
She accepted his offer thankfully, so they took the cable-car together. When they walked up the path to her little house they saw a light there; her husband had arrived before her.
"He's frightfully jealous," she announced, laughingly apologetic.
"Very well," answered Samuel, rather stiffly. "I'd better leave you here."
She thanked him and, waving a good night, he left her.
That would have been quite all if they hadn't met on Fifth Avenue one morning a week later. She started and blushed and seemed so glad to see him that they chatted like old friends. She was going to her dressmaker's, eat lunch alone at Taine's, shop all afternoon, and meet her husband on the ferry at five. Samuel told her that her husband was a very lucky man. She blushed again and scurried off.
Samuel whistled all the way back to his office, but about twelve o'clock he began to see that pathetic, appealing little mouth everywhere—and those brown eyes. He fidgeted when he looked at the clock; he thought of the grill down-stairs where he lunched and the heavy male conversation thereof, and opposed to that picture appeared another; a little table at Taine's with the brown eyes and the mouth a few feet away. A few minutes before twelve-thirty he dashed on his hat and rushed for the cable-car.