The head waiter was already leading them to a table set for three in accordance with the order Manan had telephoned from her room.  She had eliminated the possibility of discussion, and Harwood raged in his helplessness.  There was no time for a scene even if he had thought it wise to precipitate one.

“It’s only a lobster, you know,” she said, with the careless ease of a young woman quite habituated to midnight suppers.

Harwood’s frown of annoyance had not escaped her; but it only served to add to her complete joy in the situation.  There were other people about, and music proceeded from a screen of palms at the end of the dining-room.  Having had her way, Marian nibbled celery and addressed herself rather pointedly to Allen, unmindful of the lingering traces of Harwood’s discomfiture.  By the time the lobster was served she was on capital terms with Allen.

In his own delight in Marian, Allen failed utterly to comprehend Harwood’s gloomy silence.  Dan scarcely touched his plate, and he knew that Marian was covertly laughing at him.

“Do you know,” said Allen, speaking directly to Dan, “we’re having great arguments at Lueders’s; we turn the universe over every day.”

“You see, Miss Bassett,” Allen explained to Marian; “I’m a fair carpenter and work almost every day at Louis Lueders’s shop.  I earn a dollar a day and eat dinner—­dinner, mind you!—­at twelve o’clock, out of a tin pail.  You can see that I’m a laboring man—­one of the toiling millions.”

“You don’t mean that seriously, Mr. Thatcher; not really!”

“Oh, why will you say that?  Every one says just that!  No one ever believes that I mean what I say!”

This was part of some joke, Marian surmised, though she did not quite grasp it.  It was inconceivable that the son of the house of Thatcher should seriously seek a chance to do manual labor.  Allen in his dinner jacket did not look like a laborer:  he was far more her idea of a poet or a musician.

“I went to Lueders’s house the other evening for supper,” Allen was saying.  “I rather put it up to him to ask me, and he has a house with a garden, and his wife was most amusing.  We all talked German, including the kids,—­three of them, fascinating little fellows.  He’s a cabinetmaker, Miss Bassett,—­a producer of antiques, and a good one; and about the gentlest human being you ever saw.  He talks about existing law as though it were some kind of devil,—­a monster, devouring the world’s poor.  But he won’t let his wife spank the children,—­wouldn’t, even when one of them kicked a hole in my hat!  I supposed that of course there would be dynamite lying round in tomato cans; and when I shook the pepper box I expected an explosion; but I didn’t see a gun on the place.  He’s beautifully good-natured, and laughed in the greatest way when I asked him how soon he thought of blowing up some of our prominent citizens.  I really believe he likes me—­strange but true.”