"What do you mean, Starr?" He looked at her keenly and could not tell if she were in earnest or not.
"Just that," she mocked half gravely. "Tell me what you have been doing that should make you unfit company for me? Some one has been trying to make me promise to have nothing to do with you, and I want to know what it means."
"Who has been doing that?" There were dangerous lights in the dark eyes, lights that showed the brutality of the coward and the evildoer.
"Oh, a man!" said Starr provokingly; "but if you look like that I shan't tell you anything more about it, I don't like you now. You look as if you could eat me. You make me think there must be something in it all."
Quick to take the warning the young man brought his face under control and broke into a hoarse artificial laugh. A sudden vision of understanding had come to him and a fear was in his heart. There was nothing like being bold and taking the bull by the horns.
"I'll wager I can explain the riddle for you," he said airily. "I lost my way the other evening coming home late. You see there had been some mistake and my car didn't come to the club for me. I started on foot, leaving word for it to overtake me--" He lied as he went along. He had had a short lifetime of practice and did it quite naturally and easily, "and I was thinking about you and how soon I dared ask you a certain question, when all at once I noticed that things seemed sort of unfamiliar. I turned to go back but couldn't for the life of me tell which way I had turned at the last corner--you see what a dangerous influence you have over me--and I wandered on and on, getting deeper and deeper into things. It wasn't exactly a savory neighborhood and I wanted to get out as soon as possible for I suspected that it wasn't even very safe down there alone at that hour of the night. I was hesitating under a street light close to a dark alley, trying to decide which would be the quickest way out, and meditating what I should do to find a policeman, when suddenly there loomed up beside me in the dark out of the depths of the alley a great tall brute of a fellow with the strangest looking yellow hair and a body that looked as if he could play football with the universe if he liked, and charged me with having come down there to visit his girl.