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“He isn’t,” denied the lady, with ferocity. “He couldn’t.”

“He’ll find no spot to lay his head in Our Square, ma’am,” the polite Estate assured her.

“If he wants to stay, he’ll have to live in his van.”

“Grand little idea! I’ll do it. I’ll be a van hermit and fast and watch and pray beneath your windows.”

“You may live in your van forever,” retorted the justly incensed butterfly, “but I’ll never speak to you as long as I live in this house. Never, never, never!”

She vanished beyond the outrageous decorations of the wall. The Mordaunt Estate took down the “To Let” sign, and went in search of a helper to unload the van. The deserted and denounced young man crawled into his own van and lay down with his head on a tantalus and his feet on the collected works of Thackeray, to consider what had happened to him. But his immediate memories were not conducive to sober consideration, shot through as they were with the light of deep-gray eyes and the fugitive smile of lips sensitive to every changeful thought. So he fell to dreams. As to the meeting which had brought the now parted twain to Our Square, it had come about in this wise:

Two miles northwest of Our Square as the sparrow flies, on the brink of a maelstrom of traffic, two moving-vans which had belied their name by remaining motionless for five impassioned minutes, disputed the right of way, nose to nose, while the injurious remarks of the respective drivers inflamed the air. A girlish but decided voice from within the recesses of the larger van said: “Don’t give an inch.”

Deep inside the other vehicle a no less decisive barytone said what sounded like “Give an ell,” but probably was not, as there was no corresponding movement of the wheels.

What the van drivers said is the concern of the censor. What they did upon descending to the sidewalk comes under the head of direct action, and as such was the concern of the authorities which pried them asunder and led them away. Thereupon the inner habitants of the deserted equipages emerged from amid their lares and penates, and met face to face. The effect upon the occupant of the smaller van was electric, not to say paralytic.

“Oh, glory!” he murmured faintly, with staring eyes.

“Would you kindly move?” said the girl, in much the same tone that one would employ toward an obnoxious beetle, supposing that one ever addressed a beetle with freezing dignity.

The young man directed a suffering look upon his van. “I’ve done nothing else for the last three days. Tell me where I can move to and I’ll bless you as a benefactress of the homeless.”

“Anywhere out of my way,” she replied with a severity which the corners of her sensitive mouth were finding it hard to live up to.

“Behold me eliminated, deleted, expunged,” he declared humbly. “But first let me explain that when I told my idiot chauffeur to give ’em–that is, to hold his ground, I didn’t know who you were.”

She wrinkled dainty brows at him. “Well, you don’t know who I am now, do you?”

“I don’t have to,” he responded with fervor. “Just on sight you may have all of this street and as many of the adjoining avenues as you can use. By the way, who are you?” The question was put with an expression of sweet and innocent simplicity.

The girl looked at him hard and straight. “I don’t think that introductions are necessary.”

He sighed outrageously. “They Met but to Part; Laura Jean Libbey; twenty-fourth large edition,” he murmured. “And I was just about to present myself as Martin Dyke, vagrant, but harmless, and very much at your service. However, I perceive with pain that it is, indeed, my move. May I help you up to the wheel of your ship? I infer that you intend driving yourself.”

“I’ll have to, if I’m to get anywhere.” A look of dismay overspread her piquant face. “Oh, dear! I don’t in the least understand this machinery. I can’t drive this kind of car.”