“Yes, or earlier,” Mr. Pierce said pleasantly.  “I suppose you could have something at seven.”

“And suppose I refuse?” he retorted disagreeably.

But everybody turned on him, and said if they could do it, he could, and he sat down again.  Then somebody suggested that if they were to get up they’d have to go to bed, and the party broke up.

Doctor Barnes helped me gather up the clam shells and the plates.

“It’s a risky business,” he said.  “To-night doesn’t mean anything; they’re carried away by the reaction and the desire for something new.  The next week will tell the tale.”

“If we could only get rid of Mr. Thoburn!” I exclaimed.  Doctor Barnes chuckled.

“We may not get rid of him,” he said, “but I can promise him the most interesting week of his life.  He’ll be too busy for mischief.  I’m going to take six inches off his waist line.”

Well, in a half-hour or so I had cleared away, and I went out to the lobby to lock up the news stand.  Just as I opened the door from the back hall, however, I heard two people talking.

It was Miss Pat and Mr. Pierce.  She was on the stairs and he in the hall below, looking up.

“I don’t want to stay!” she was saying.

“But don’t you see?” he argued.  “If you go, the others will.  Can’t you try it for a week?”

“I quite understand your motive,” she said, looking down at him more pleasantly than she’d ever done, “and it’s very good of you and all that.  But if you’d only left things as they were, and let us all go, and other people come—­”

“That’s just it,” he said.  “I’m told it’s the bad season and nobody else would come until Lent.  And, anyhow, it’s not business to let a lot of people go away mad.  It gives the place a black eye.”

“Dear me,” she said, “how businesslike you are growing!”

He went over close to the stairs and dropped his voice.

“If you want the bitter truth,” he went on, trying to smile, “I’ve put myself on trial and been convicted of being a fool and a failure.  I’ve failed regularly and with precision at everything I have tried.  I’ve been going around so long trying to find a place that I fit into, that I’m scarred as with many battles.  And now I’m on probation—­for the last time.  If this doesn’t go, I—­I—­”

“What?” she asked, leaning down to him.  “You’ll not—­”

“Oh, no,” he said, “nothing dramatic, of course.  I could go around the country in a buggy selling lightning-rods—­”

She drew herself back as if she resented his refusal of her sympathy.

“Or open a saloon in the Philippines!” he finished mockingly.  “There’s a living in that.”

“You are impossible,” she said, and turned away.

Oh, I haven’t any excuse to make for him!  I think he was just hungry for her sympathy and her respect, knowing nothing else was coming to him.  But the minute they grew a bit friendly he seemed to remember the prince, and that, according to his idea of it, she was selling herself, and he would draw off and look at her in a mocking unhappy way that made me want to slap him.