"I'm so glad you are getting used to the Y. W. C. A.," Miss Adair answered, giving him a delighted smile as he seated himself beside her while Valentine started the car up the avenue. "Mr. Height said it was like being forced to go to church in a strange town and getting into somebody's cozy corner by mistake."
"I wish I were married to that girl, to-night," Mr. Vandeford exclaimed out of the sudden rush of anxiety that had overtaken him by this fledgling author's mention of his leading man.
"Then who would be taking me out, out on Broadway?" asked Miss Adair with a little laugh that had a more distinctly friendly note in it than it had before held for him.
"Both of us," replied Mr. Vandeford, with an answering laugh that sounded much too young in his own ears. "You'll need two."
"Am I going to have as many dreadful things happen to me to-night as I was going to have when I met Mr. Corbett and Mr. Benjamin David and Mr. Height and the other theatrical people? Am I being warned again?" Mr. Vandeford accepted the teasing and laughed at himself.
"My wings are up. Go out and scratch for yourself."
"Not very far, though," Miss Adair answered. Mr. Vandeford was not sure that she moved a fraction of an inch nearer to him, but he hoped so. "I feel just the same about you as I do about Roger and I like to be going with you—into—into danger."
"Who's Roger?" questioned Mr. Vandeford.
"He's my brother, who treats me as you do. It's fun for a woman to be frightened dreadfully when she is with a man she likes." Again there was that uncertainty as to whether Miss Adair fluttered a fraction of an inch in his direction, and for the life of him Mr. Vandeford could not say whence had flown all the many ways he would have commanded ordinarily for the finding out if such were the case.
"A frightened woman is often rather—rather deadly to a man," he answered before he could stop himself. The habit of speaking out directly to Miss Adair was growing on him, he perceived, and it alarmed him.