His arm would have been around her waist, but she evaded it firmly.

“Don’t you know what has happened?” she demanded, earnestly.  “Don’t you really know?”

“Can’t say that I do,” he admitted.  “I’ve got a sort of feeling as though I’d been all tied-up like, lately.  Haven’t been able to enjoy myself properly, and gone mooning about after shadows.  To-night I feel just as though I were coming into my own again a bit.  I say,” he added, admiringly, “you do look stunning!  Come and have some supper—­no one will know—­and let me drive you home afterwards.  Do!”

She shook her head.

“I don’t think you must talk to me quite like this,” she said kindly.  “You have a wife, you know, and I am engaged to be married.”

He laughed, quite easily.

“Never seen Ellen, have you?” he remarked.  “She’s a fine woman, you know, although she isn’t quite your style.  She’d think you sort of pale and colorless, I expect—­no kind of go or dash about you.”

“Is that what you think?” Edith asked him, smiling.

“You aren’t exactly the style I’ve always admired,” he confessed, “but there’s something about you,” he added, in a puzzled manner,—­“I don’t know what it is but I remember it from a year ago—­something that seemed to catch hold of me.  I expect I must be a sentimental sort of Johnny underneath.  However, I do admire you, Edith, immensely.  I only wish—­”

Again she evaded him.

“Please do not forget Mr. Bomford,” she begged.

“That silly old ass!” Burton exclaimed.  “Looks as though he’d swallowed a poker!  You’re never going to marry him!”

“I think that I shall,” she replied.  “At any rate, at present I am engaged to him.  Therefore, if you please, you must keep just a little further away.  I don’t like to mention it, but I think—­haven’t you been smoking rather too much?”

He laughed, without a trace of sensitiveness.  “I have been having rather a day of it,” he admitted.  “But I say, Edith, if you won’t come to supper, I think you might let a fellow—­”

She drew back into her corner.

“Mr. Burton,” she said, “you must please not come near me.”

“But I want a kiss,” he protested.  “You’d have given me one the other night.  You’d have given me as many as I’d liked.  You almost clung to me—­that night under the cedar tree.”

Her eyes for a moment were half closed.

“It was a different world then,” she whispered softly.  “It was a different Mr. Burton.  You see, since then a curtain has come down.  We are starting a fresh act and I don’t think I know you quite so well as I did.”

“Sounds like tommyrot,” he grumbled.

The taxicab came to a standstill.  The man got down and opened the door.  Burton half sulkily stepped out on to the pavement.

“Well, here you are,” he announced.  “Can’t say that I think much of you this evening.”