"For which I am, as always in the face of favors, duly grateful," said Peter in high humor. "None the less I have this day, since we parted this morning, indulged in one pistol duel between sampans, with one of your admirable confrères——"
"Yes, I heard of that. But it stopped there. You winged his sampan coolie."
"And at the Canton station, if I may be pardoned for contradicting, I encountered the red-faced one. To tell you what you may already know, I punched him in the jaw, dog-gone him!"
She seemed to be distressed.
"You must be mistaken."
Peter shook his head forcibly. "A choleric gentleman born with the habit of reaching for his hip-pocket," he amplified.
She studied him with wide, speculative eyes. "He must be from the north. Some of them I do not know. But all of them have been informed."
"To permit me to live and love until one to-morrow morning?"
She nodded.
The aspiring and perspiring orchestra and the impassioned tenor had again reached the chorus of "Un Peu d'Amour."