Barney rose as she entered.  He was in smart dinner jacket; these days Barney was wearing the smartest of everything that money could secure.  There was a shadow of impatience on his face, but it was instantly dissipated by Maggie’s self-composed, direct-eyed beauty.

“How’d you come out with Miss Sherwood?” he whispered eagerly.

“Well enough for her to kiss me good-bye, and beg me to come again.”

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Maggie!  You’re sure some swell actress—­ you’ve sure got class!” His dark eyes gleamed on her with half a dozen pleasures:  admiration of what she was in herself—­admiration of what she had just achieved—­anticipation of results, many results—­ anticipation of what she was later to mean to him in a personal way.  “If you can put it over on a swell like Miss Sherwood, you can put it over on any one!” He exulted.  “As soon as we clean up this job in hand, we’ll move on to one big thing after another!”

And then out came the question Maggie had been bracing herself for:  “How about Dick Sherwood?  Did he finally come across with that proposal?”

“No,” Maggie answered steadily.

“No?  Why not?” exclaimed Barney sharply.  “I thought that was all that was holding him back—­waiting for his sister to look you over and give you her O.K.?”

Maggie had decided that her air of cool, indifferent certainty was the best manner to use in this situation with Barney.  So she shrugged her white shoulders.

“How can I tell what makes a man do something, and what makes him not do it?”

“But did he seem any less interested in you than before?” Barney pursued.

“No,” replied Maggie.

“Then maybe he’s just waiting to get up his nerve.  He’ll ask you, all right; nothing there for us to worry about.  Come on, let’s have dinner.  I’m starved.”

On the roof of the Grantham they were excellently served; for Barney knew how to order a dinner, and he knew the art, which is an alchemistic mixture of suave diplomacy and the insinuated power and purpose of murder, of handling head-waiters and their sub-autocrats.  Having no other business in hand, Barney devoted himself to that business which ran like a core through all his businesses—­paying court to Maggie.  And when Barney wished to be a courtier, there were few of his class who could give a better superficial interpretation of the role; and in this particular instance he was at the advantage of being in earnest.  He forced the most expensive tidbits announced by the dinner card upon Maggie; he gallantly and very gracefully put on and removed, as required by circumstances, the green cobweb of a scarf Maggie had brought to the roof as protection against the elements; and when he took the dancing-floor with her, he swung her about and hopped up and down and stepped in and out with all the skill of a master of the modern perversion of dancing.  Barney was really good enough to have been a professional dancer had his desires not led him toward what seemed to him a more exciting and more profitable career.