“Oh!  Have we come to that?”

“You know better than to go loafing through town with a truant school-girl you hardly know.  I suppose it’s my fault for introducing you to her.  I want you to tell me how you managed this.  Did you telephone her or write a note?  Sit down here now and let’s have it out.”

They drew away from the crowd and found seats in a quiet corner of the lobby.

Harwood, his anger unabated, repeated his question.

“Out with it; just how did you manage it?”

Allen was twisting his gloves nervously; he had not been conscious of transgressing any law, but he would not for worlds have invited Harwood’s displeasure.  He was near to tears; but he remained stubbornly silent until Harwood again demanded to know how he contrived the meeting with Marian.

“I’m sorry, old man,” Allen answered, “but I can’t tell you anything about it.  I don’t see that my crime is so heinous.  She has been cooped up in the hotel all day with her sick mother, and a short walk—­it was only a few blocks—­couldn’t have done her any harm.  I think you’re making too much of it.”

“You were dallying there in the park, in a way to attract attention, with a headstrong, silly girl that you ought to have protected from that sort of thing.  You know better than that.”

Allen, enfolded in his long ulster, shuffled his feet on the tiling like a school-boy in disgrace.  Deep down in his heart, Harwood did not believe that Allen had proposed the walk to Marian; it was far likelier that Marian had sought the meeting by note or telephone.  He turned upon Allen with a slight relaxation of his sternness.

“You didn’t write her a note or telephone her,—­you didn’t do either, did you?”

Allen, silent and dejected, dropped his gloves and picked them up, the color deepening in his cheeks.

“I just happened to meet her; that’s all,” he said, avoiding Dan’s eyes.

“She wrote you a note or telephoned you?”

Silence.

“Humph,” grunted Harwood.

“She’s wonderfully beautiful and strong and so tremendously vivid!  I think those nice girls you read of in the Greek mythology must have been like that,” murmured Allen, sighing heavily.

“I dare say they were!” snapped Harwood, searching the youngster’s thin, sensitive face, and meeting for an instant his dreamy eyes.  He was touched anew by the pathos in the boy, whose nature was a light web of finespun golden cords thrilling to any breath of fancy.  The superb health, the dash and daring of a school-girl that he had seen but once or twice, had sent him climbing upon a frail ladder of romantic dreams.

Harwood struck his hands together sharply.  If he owed a duty to Marian and her family, not less he was bound to turn Allen’s thoughts into safe channels.

“Of course it wouldn’t do—­that sort of thing, you know, Allen.  I didn’t mean to beat you into the dust.  Let’s go over to Pop June’s and get some oysters.  I don’t feel up to our usual boarding-house discussion of Christian Science to-night.”