“It was kind of you to come,” he said jerkily, in his embarrassment.

“I enjoyed every moment,” she said warmly.  “But that wasn’t all I meant when I thanked you.”

His eyebrows climbed with surprise.

“What else, Miss Lessing?”

“Your delicacy in letting me know you understood—­”

Disengaging her hand, she broke off with a startled movement, and a low cry of surprise.

A taxicab, swinging into the street from Eighth Avenue, had boiled up to the curb before the gate, and pausing, discharged a young man in a hurry; witness the facts that he had the door open when halfway between the corner and the house, and was on the running-board before the vehicle was fairly at a halt.

In a stride this one crossed the sidewalk and pulled up, silently, trying to master the temper which was visibly shaking him.  Tall, well-proportioned, impressively turned out in evening clothes, he thrust forward a handsome face marred by an evil, twisted mouth, and peered searchingly at the girl.

Instinctively she shrank back inside the fence, eyeing him with a look of fascinated dismay.

As instinctively P. Sybarite bristled between the two.

“Well?” he snapped at the intruder.

An impatient gesture of a hand immaculately gloved in white abolished him completely—­as far, at least, as the other was concerned.

“Ah—­Miss Lessing, I believe?”

The voice was strong and musical but poisoned with a malicious triumph that grated upon the nerves of P. Sybarite; he declined to be abolished.

“Say the word,” he suggested serenely to the girl, “and I’ll bundle this animal back into that taxi and direct the driver to the nearest accident ward.  I’d rather like to, really.”

“Get rid of this microbe,” interrupted the other savagely—­“unless you want him buried between glass slides under a microscope.”

The girl turned to P. Sybarite with pleading eyes and imploring hands.

“If you please, dear Mr. Sybarite,” she begged in a tremulous voice:  “I’m afraid I must speak alone with this”—­there was a barely perceptible pause—­gentleman.  If you won’t mind waiting a moment—­at the door—?”

“If it pleases you, Miss Lessing—­most certainly.”  He drew back a step or two.  “But speaking of microbes,” he added incisively, “a word of advice:  don’t tease ’em.  My bite is deadly:  neither Pasteur nor your family veterinary could save you.”

Ignored by the man, but satisfied in his employment of the last word, he strutted back to the brownstone stoop, there to establish himself, out of earshot but within, easy hail.

Hearing nothing, he made little more of the guarded conference that began on his withdrawal.  The man, entering the dooryard, had cornered the girl in an angle of the fence.  He seemed at once insistent, determined, and thoroughly angry; while she exhibited perfect composure with some evident contempt and implacable obstinacy.  Nevertheless, in a brace of minutes the fellow seemingly brought forth some telling argument.  She wavered and her accents rose in doubt: