“Because there’s no nonsense about you.  There are a lot of things I’d like to talk to you about—­things I don’t quite understand—­if you’d only let me see you.”

“You’re seeing me now, aren’t you?”

“Yes.  But I can’t talk about them all—­at once.”

“You’ve made a pretty good start, I should say.”

Jerry laughed.  “I have, haven’t I?  That’s the way I always do when I’m with you.”

“Always?” she inquired, raising her brows with a show of dignity.  “Do you realize that I have only met you once—­twice before in my life—­and then most informally?”

“I feel as if I’d known you always.”

“But you haven’t.  And I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all.”

“But you do, better than anybody almost.  It was awfully good of you to come here with me today—­after my meeting you the way I did.  I ought to apologize.  Girls don’t like to go with fellows when they come out of saloons, but I wasn’t drinking, you know.”

“Oh, weren’t you?”

“No,” he said hastily.  And then to cover a possible misconception of his meaning, “But of course I would drink, if I wanted to.  I don’t see any difference between having a drink at Finnegan’s and having it in a club uptown.”

She regarded him for a moment in silence and then,

“You do belong to some of the clubs, then?”

“Oh, yes.  The Cosmos, the Butterfly and several others—­” He broke off with a laugh.  “You see, I’m supposed to be something of a swell”—­

“You don’t look much of a swell today,” she said with a glance at his clothes.  “And Finnegan’s, though exclusive for the Bowery, is hardly what might be called smart.  I am curious, Jerry.  Curiosity is one of my besetting sins—­otherwise I’d never have gotten inside your wall.  I’ve been wondering what on earth you could have been doing in Finnegan’s saloon.”

Jerry sipped at his tea and was silent.  The girl’s eyes still questioned good-humoredly and then, still smiling, looked away.  But Jerry would not speak.  A coward she had once called him.  Was it that he feared her sober judgment of this wild plan of his?  Did he see something hazardous in the conservatism of her calm slate-blue eyes that would put his new mode of thought, his new habit of mind to tests which they might not survive?

“I—­I said it was on business of Flynn’s,” he evaded at last.  “He’s a very good friend of mine.  It wouldn’t interest you in the least, you know,” he finished lamely.

“Possibly not,” she said calmly.  “I hope you’ll forgive my impertinence.”

He felt the change in her tone and was up in arms at once.  “Don’t talk in that way, Una.  I’d let you know if there was any possible use.”  He paused and then decidedly, “But there isn’t, you see.  Won’t you take my word for it?”

She laughed at his serious demeanor.

“You know I am a curious creature, unduly so about this.  But you do seem a little like the Caliph in the Arabian Nights, or Prince Florizel in London.  You aren’t a second-story man, are you?  Or a member of a suicide club?”