charmingly flushed with budding womanhood as this girl?

"Eighteen?" he hazarded. "Eighteen, or possibly nineteen, dining at the
Pless in a ravishing dinner-gown, and--unhappy? Oh, hardly--not she!"

Yet the impression haunted him, and ere long he was fain to seek
confirmation or denial of it in the manner of her escort.

The latter sat with back to Kirkwood, cutting a figure as negative as his
snug evening clothes. One could surmise little from a fleshy thick neck,
a round, glazed bald spot, a fringe of grizzled hair, and two bright red
ears.

Calendar?

Somehow the fellow did suggest Kirkwood's caller of the afternoon. The
young man could not have said precisely how, for he was unfamiliar with the
aspect of that gentleman's back. None the less the suggestion persisted.

By now, a few of the guests, theater-bound, for the most part, were
leaving. Here and there a table stood vacant, that had been filled, cloth
tarnished, chairs disarranged: in another moment to be transformed into its
pristine brilliance under the deft attentions of the servitors.

Down an aisle, past the table at which the girl was sitting, came two,
making toward the lobby; the man, a slight and meager young personality, in
the lead. Their party had attracted Kirkwood's notice as they entered; why,
he did not remember; but it was in his mind that then they had been three.
Instinctively he looked at the table they had left--one placed at some
distance from the girl, and hidden from her by an angle in the wall. It