“Better not get in too deep with those fellows,” warned Dan.  “The police watch Lueders carefully; he’s considered dangerous.  It’s the quiet ones, who are kind to their families and raise cabbages, that are the most violent.”

“Oh, Lueders says we’ve got to smash everything!  He rather favors socialism himself, but he wants to tear down the court-houses first and begin again.”

“You’d better be careful or you’ll land in jail, Mr. Thatcher,” remarked Marian, taking an olive.

“Oh, if anything as interesting as that should happen to me, I should certainly die of joy!”

“But your family wouldn’t like it if you went to jail,” persisted Marian, delighting in the confidences of a young gentleman for whom jails had no terrors.

“The thought of my family is disturbing, it’s positively disturbing,” Allen replied.  “Lueders has given me a chance in his shop, and really expects me to work.  Surprising in an anarchist; you’d rather expect him to press a stick of dynamite in your hand and tell you to go out and blow up a bank.  Lueders has a sense of humor, you know:  hence the antiques, made to coax money from the purses of the fat rich.  There are more ways than one of being a cut-purse.”

The lobster had been consumed, and they were almost alone in the restaurant.  Marian, with her elbows on the table, was in no haste to leave, but Dan caught the eye of the hovering waiter and paid the check.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Marian protested; “it was my party.  I sign my own checks here.”

But having now asserted himself, Dan rose, and in a moment he and Allen had bidden her good-night at the elevator door.

“You didn’t seem crazy about your lobster, and you were hardly more than polite to our hostess.  Sorry to have butted in.  But why have you kept these tender recreations from me!”

“Oh, that child vexes my spirit sometimes.  She’s bent on making people do things they don’t want to do.  Of course the lobster was a mere excuse for getting acquainted with you; but you needn’t be too set up about it:  I think her curiosity about your family is responsible,—­these fake newspaper stories about your sister—­which is it, Hermione or Gwendolen—­who is always about to marry a count.  Countesses haven’t been common in Indiana.  We need a few to add tone to the local gossip.”

“Oh,” murmured Allen dejectedly:  “I’m sorry if you didn’t want me in the party.  It’s always the way with me.  Nobody ever really loves me for myself alone.  What does the adorable do besides midnight lobsters?  I thought Aunt Sally said she was at Miss Waring’s school.”

“She is, more or less,” growled Dan.  “Her mother wants to put her through college, to please the wealthy great-aunt.  Mrs. Owen has shown interest in another girl who is now at Wellesley; hence Marian must go to college, and the bare thought of it bores her to death.  She’s as little adapted to a course in college as one of those bright goddesses who used to adorn Olympus.”