“Not for me,” replied the Youngster.  “I want to know about her debut.  Was she a success?”

“Of course,” answered the Journalist.  “That sort always is.”

“And I want to know,” insisted the Youngster, “what became of him?”

“Why,” ejaculated the Sculptor, “of course he cut his big brown throat!”

“Not a bit of it,” said the Critic.  “He probably went up to New York, and hung round the stage door.”

“Until she called in the police, and had him arrested as a common nuisance,” added the Lawyer.

“I’ll bet my microscope he didn’t,” laughed the Doctor.

“And you won’t lose your lens,” replied the Journalist.  “He never did a blooming thing—­that is, he didn’t if he existed.”

“Oh, my eyes,” said the Youngster.  “I am disappointed again.  I thought that was a simon-pure newspaper yarn—­one of your reporter’s dodges—­real journalese!”

“She is true enough,” answered the Journalist, “and her feet are true, and so is her red hair, and, unless she is a liar, and most actresses are, so is he and her origin, but as for the way she cut him out—­well, I had to make that up.  It is better than any of the six tales she told as many interviewers, in strict secrecy, in the days when she was collecting hearts and jewels and midnight suppers in New York.”

“Is she still there?” asked the Youngster, “because if she is, I’ll go back and take a look at Dora myself—­after the war!”

“Well, Youngster,” laughed the Journalist, “it will have to be ’after the war,’ as you will probably have to go to Berlin to find her.”

“That’s all right!” retorted the Youngster.  “I am going—­with the Allied armies.”

We all jumped up.

“No!” cried the Divorcee.  “No!!”

“But I am.  Where’s the good of keeping it secret?  I enlisted the day I went to Paris the first time—­so did the Doctor, so did the Critic, and so did he, the innocent looking old blackguard,” and he seized the Journalist by both shoulders and shook him well.  “He thought we wouldn’t find it out.”

“Oh, well,” said the Journalist, “when one has seen three wars, one may as well see one more.—­This will surely be my last.”

“Anyway,” cried the Youngster, “we’ll see it all round—­the Doctor in the Field Ambulance, me in the air, the Critic is going to lug litters, and as for the Journalist—­well, I’ll bet it’s secret service for him!  Oh, I know you are not going to tell, but I saw you coming out of the English Embassy, and I’ll bet my machine you’ve a ticket for London, and a letter to the Chief in your pocket.”

“Bet away,” said the Critic.

“What’d I tell you—­what’d I tell you?  He speaks every God-blessed language going, and if it wasn’t that, he’d tell fast enough.”

“Never mind,” said the Trained Nurse, “so that he goes somewhere—­with the rest of us.”

“You—­YOU?” exclaimed the Divorcee.