“Oh, Irving, don’t.  I—­Please—­”

She laid her fork across her untouched plate and turned her face from him.  Tears rose to choke her, and, tighten her throat against them as she would, one rose to the surface and ricocheted down her cheek.

“Why, Miriam!”

“It’s nothing, Irving, only—­only let’s get out of here.  I don’t want any lunch, I just don’t.”

“Miriam, that’s the way I feel, too.  I—­I just can’t bear to have you go!”

“You—­We can’t talk like that, Irving.”

“I tell you, Miriam, I just can’t bear it!”

“I—­I—­oh—­”

He leaned across the table for her hand, whispering, with an entire flattening of tone, “Miriam, don’t go!”

“Irving, don’t—­talk so—­so silly!”

“Miriam, let’s—­let’s you and me stay at home!”

“Irving!”

“Let’s, Miriam!”

“Irving, are you crazy?” But her voice yearned toward him.

“Miriam, right at this table I’ve got an idea.  We can do it, Miriam; we can do it if you’re game.”

“Do what?”

He flashed out his watch.  “We’ve got two hours and twenty minutes before she sails.”

“Irving!”

“We have, dear, to—­to get a special license and the ring and do the trick.”

“Why, I—­”

“Two hours and twenty minutes to make it all right for you to stay back with me.  Miriam, are you game, dear?”

They regarded each other across the table as if each beheld in the other a vision.

“Irving, you—­you must be crazy!”

“I’m not, dear.  I was never less crazy.  What’s the use of us having to get apart after we just got each other?  What’s all those phony counts and picture-galleries and high-sounding stunts compared to us staying home and hitting it off together, Miriam?  Just tell me that, Miriam.”

“Irving, I—­we just couldn’t!  Look at mamma and papa and Ray, all down at the boat maybe by now waiting for me, and none of them wanting to go except me.  For a whole year I had to beg them for this, Irving.  They wouldn’t be going now if it wasn’t for me.  I—­Irving, you must be crazy!”

He leaned closer and out of range of the waiter, his voice repressed to a tight whisper.

“None of those things count when a girl and a fellow fall in love like you and me, Miriam.”

Even in her crisis her diffidence inclosed her like a sheath.  “I never said I—­I was in love, did I?”

“But you are!  They’ll go over there, Miriam, without you and have the time of their lives.  We’ll stay home and keep the flat open for them so your mother won’t have to worry any more about burglars.  After the first surprise it won’t be a trick at all.  We got two hours and fifteen minutes, dearie, and we can do the act and be down at the boat with bells on to tell ’em good-by.  Now ain’t the time to think about the little things and waste time, Miriam.  We got to do it now or off you go hiking, just like—­like we had never met, a whole ocean between us, Miriam!”